Elections in Russia: Putin's party wins big while russian media reports massive election-fraud.

[DetlefK]

http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2016-08/duma-wahl-russland-wahlbetrug-umfrage
(article in german)

According to the russian polling-institute Lewada, 51% of russian voters expected before the election that some kind of election-fraud would happen.
23% of voters expressed willingness to sell their vote.
About half of those 23% thought that 5000 Rubles (~$60) would be a fair price.

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http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/russland-wahl-107.html
(article in german)

The voter-participation dropped from 60.21% to 47.5%.

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http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/russland-so-wird-bei-der-parlamentswahl-betrogen-a-1112833.html
(article in german)

- Polling-place 1958, in Rostow: A security-camera videotapes a woman stuffing the urn with several ballots while two others try to block the field of view.
- In Nishnij Novgorod, a member of the electoral commission stuffed extra ballots into the urn. On camera.
- In Saint Petersburg, journalists of Rosbalt.ru reported that Groups of students and seniors were bribed and told who to vote for.
- The russian organization Golos reported on "carousels": Voters being bused from polling-place to polling-place to vote repeatedly.
- A journalist of Fontanka.ru managed to infiltrate such a group. He got a special sticker in his passport and got 4 ballots at the polling-place... even though he wasn't even registered to vote there.
- In Moscow, the candidate for Putin's Party "United Russia" was President of the academy for disaster control. Somehow the students of his academy got bused en masse to the polling-place.
- In Dagestan, there was a brawl as the urn was opened. Journalists posted a video of ripped-up ballots lying on the floor.


- Gerrymandering: Liberal city-districts were mixed with rural areas where United Russia is strong.
- The opposition-parties had little access to run ads on TV.
- Out of the 6510 candidates, only 23 ran as Independents, because the bureaucratic hurdles are so high. The party of the opposition-politician Navalny wasn't even registered for the election.
- The laws for demonstrations were made more restrictive.
- Independent organizations like Golos and Lewada were branded as "foreign agents".
- Due to fighting, the OSCE decided not to send election-observers to the northern Caucasus-region, even though the place has a special reputation for election-fraud.

[Nitram]

1. While times were good, and oil prices were high...

the Russian people blithely exchanged their fledgling democracy for the one-man rule of Putin. Putin has an iron grip on the military, the police, the economy, and all political institutions, so it would be very difficult to change course now.