by Geneva Observer for the Saker blog
Today, with a sunny blue sky and cold breeze, I had the pleasure to accompany three generations of family members to the voting polls here in Yaroslavl. The polling station was in the local school. The school is surrounded by an iron enclosure with a gate to allow a single person to enter at a time. Two steps up and we entered through the main steel door.
Free masks were made available at the entry. No one made an issue of actually wearing them. There was a metal detector at the entry but it was not in use (we had no big bags or knapsack). We walked by it and headed up a flight of stairs and down a hallway to a large room flanked with large trestle tables. Each table had a person with a list of voters before them. On the wall was marked the building you resided in.
The electoral official demands you identify yourself with a passport or other identification before marking you on their list as having been given your ballots. The date and time is indicated on the list. The listing is then pushed toward the voter. The person receiving the ballot then signs on the line. The signatures are upside down as the
list is not turned for signature. I guess this makes it more difficult to fake someone else’s signature.
By the windows is a set a screens to actually mark your ballots. There is one with individual names that are running for election and a second ballot which is marked with the logo and name of the political party. Half of the representatives are elected directly. The other half is by party representation.
In Russia there is almost no waiting in a line to be able to vote. Voters have no need to have water distributed to them in a waiting line. The school toilets are available to whomever needs them. Those who need help with the stairs just need to ask.
For those that cannot make it for health or other reasons you can vote at home. You must apply on the gosuslugi (state services) site from the 9th to the 14th of September (ten to five days in advance) or telephone the polling commission. You can also vote at another place if you are traveling, again as per the above procedure. You will then vote at the polling station where you are.
The paper ballots are then placed upside down and scanned into the ballot box. The polling will finish at 20h00 this evening. We expect the first vote count results this evening.
This Russian election looks to me as well organized, safe and secure. It will be difficult to have anything like the recent US presidential election controversies.
Yesterday we were in the city center and passed the Yves Rocher shop. There was no political signage or any trace of the Navalny brothers to be seen within a hundred meters of the shop.
The United Russia party appears to still dominate but with somewhat less support after the pension reforms. Fair Russia has the ex-governor of Yaroslavl running for them and will likely attract a large number of votes from United Russia. The Communist party appears to be the largest opposition but it is too early to say how well they will do in this polling. There will be lots to talk about the election results over tomorrow morning’s coffee.
It sounds very much like the procedure when I vote here in England. Except that I don’t have to produce ID – they send a card to my home, but I don’t even need to bring that. They mark off each person by their place of residence, and presumably if anyone else claims to be the same person there would be trouble.
Nor do I have to sign – which I would be happy to do if anyone asked.
So, all in all, it looks as though elections in Russia are slightly more secure than they are in Britain.
Although, frankly speaking, none of that matters when the elctorate are stupid, lazy, ill-informed and downright brainwashed. After all, at the last General Election they chose the Conservatives led by Boris Johnson.
You recon the conservatives were elected in the last elections. LOL, check the vote percentages, the majority of the voters actually rejected the conservatives
Thanks, Andrei. It appears United Russia is in the lead followed by KPRF:
https://www.rt.com/russia/534910-parliament-election-preliminary-results/
Ruling United Russia party in the lead after preliminary results in Russian parliamentary election announced
“With 9% of the ballots counted in Russia’s parliamentary election, the ruling United Russia party looks set to remain the prime political power in the country for the next five years, leading the pack with 38.7% of the vote.
United Russia is followed by the Communist Party (KPRF) party on 25% and the Liberal Democratiic Party (LDPR), who so far have 9.6% of the ballot, according to the preliminary results announced by the Central Election Commission.”
I was just talking to a lady this pm who had got back to the DPR from Russia where she had voted for United Russia.
There are now about 700 000 Russian citizens in the DPR & LPR.
Unless the polecats Navalny and the Yabloko Party with their support in the Western media emerge victorious it cannot be a free and fair election, for crying out loud.
In any political election, in any part of the world, “if they changed anything they would outlaw them’ as Emma Goldman said back in the 1920s
According to Donbass Lives Matter in a comment dated August 7th:
Wouldn’t surprise me the slightest. More than ever, today’s Pindos and Euro-trash are totally beyond redemption and below contempt. Which makes their temper tantrums absolutely self-defeating. Or is there a chance of Putin stepping down in favour of Navalny/Sobchak/Yabloko? Hardly.
I wrote myself three days ago about the awesome reporting coming from the charlatan ’journalist’ accredited to Moscow by Sweden’s national broadcaster, Russophobe Bert Sundström. He lives up to his initials, and how:
Well, now that the ’wrong’ result has been established, here is his employer’s rendition:
Our correspondent Bert Sundström said last Friday that we are dealing with a kind of bogus election, accompanied by silencing of any and all voices of opposition.
If only they had forcefully silenced this moron, I would have felt elated.
Interestingly, both Danish and Norwegian stte broadcasters’ correspondents in Moscow have re- and tri-duplicated the exact wording as the Swedish language remarks by B-S (Barf Surströmning), dranslated word by word into Danish and Norwegian,
The “Liberal Press” in Scandinavia (Information, Dagbladet, Göteborgskan and Svenska Dagbadet) are even worse. Only the Finnish “Hufudstadsbladet” and “Hälsingin saanomat” have not completely lost their grip with reality!
Barf Surströmming or Bloody Swede — take your pick. Yes, the MSM outlets in the Nordic countries (I don’t know about Iceland, tbh) are pathetic with Finland’s slightly better off on average. And the ’progressive’ rags are forever adding LGBTQ++ and suchlike infantile garbage to their equally Russophobic barfs.
Anyway, United Russia and the KPRF emerged on top, scoring ”slightly better” than the darlings of our BullShitters, left, right, and centre.
FYI
I was an official observer in 1996 and here’s my account
https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2017/06/16/presidential-election-1996/
Now that was an interesting read. I noticed a couple of months ago that some organisation had declined to send observers to the current election – presumably so that there were no awkward facts for the legitimisation that will inevitably follow.
Also, I’ve bookmarked your site.
Communists 25%!!!!!!?????
Jesus Christ, what is wrong with those people.
Not enough disaster that communists created for them…
Pension reform is problem???
But 60 for men 55 for women is too early for pension nowadays.
In the West government rise age for pension and nobody ask people for anything. What protests, who cares what people think.
Those Russians, socialism spoiled them.
I can understand everything, but voting for communists in such percentage
In Russia!!!
Yes, they would really be happy with Zyuganov and his idiots.
You don’t live in the west, You live n the Balkans where you lie cheat and exploit your neighbour. In Canada you can take early retirement at 55 or 60. To calculate your gain over time, if you live well into the 70s you are on the plus side beyond that you lose a few dollars but why do you need them when you are drooling into your soup
I live in Australia and retirement is raised to 67 for both men and women
And nobody give a s..t what people think about that.
It does mean that the most vital years of your retirement are taken. If you have a meaningful engaging job, you might want to stay on until 70 or later. But people in a boring or physically heavy job really miss out on a lot.
People who get layed off because they are replaced by outsourcing, young immigrants or robots are even worse off: they often have to ”eat up their house”, their life savings, because they have too much savings to qualify for unemployment.
Life expectancy, just like length does not increase anymore in the west. That makes it stealing.
In Russia it is more complicated. Life expectancy has risen. But if the pension age has to be risen, it should be done very gradually. I was told all my life I could retire at 65, and a year before I heard it changed to 67. That was very hard to digest!!!! Eventually it was turned back to 66 Y and 4 months, which felt a lot more reasonable.
Fortunately I am healthy and am able to enjoy my (rather sober) retirement.
About communism: no we don’t want to adopt Lenin, certainly not Trotsky, or Stalin, Brezhnev nor even Castro (although I still love El Commandante!)
But thanks to even that type of communism, the world had been in relative balance. Now, it is not…
“Communists 25%!!!!!!?????”
The Communists were the only party that made it clear that they were against further controls on people – vaccinations, QR codes, lockdowns etc. Of course, if they won the election, they would have done the same and more.
I think Putin recently said something along the lines of “Whoever doesn’t miss the Soviet Union has no heart; Whoever wants it back has no brain”.
Looks like the Russian left (the Communist Party and Just Russia) are doing fairly well in these elections, while the neo-liberal filth column groups won almost no votes. The average Russian would clearly rather have some sort of socialist-oriented economy over the disastrous neo-liberal capitalism of the 1990s. We can expect Western governments and various neo-liberal/Neocon propagandists to be very, very upset about the results. :-)
Communists would destroy Russia and ruin everything achieved last 21 or 22 years since Putin came to power.
Luckily they will never return to power. But they are too strong and it is no good.
Probably old people vote for them. They were young and healthy in USSR and they now live in nostalgic ilussions that USSR was a paradise.
Rubbish. I visited USSR in 1987 as a young student from Yugoslavia and when I saw life in USSR compared to Yugoslavia I praised Dear God and thanked Marshal Tito for keeping us OUT of Eastern Block.
Communist should NEVER be allowed to take power in Russia again.
Never
Reportedly, Navalny’s liberals have supported the communists. They might be hoping to undermine the nationalists by supporting communists.
So it increases the percentage of the communists with 1.5 %?????
Not very impressive, and a rock hard nut to crack for the western MSM.. Reporting even these results goes against every algorithm and every censor board in ” our MSM world”
Stalin who was the undisputed leader of World Communism for three decades is genuinely popular in today’s Russia, including among the vast majority of people who were born in the 1960s and later. So there is more to the popularity of the KPRF than ’nostalgic pensioners’, mind you. My hunch, maybe wrong, is that the KPRF is the party in Russia which would make the RF look more like Belarus with a stronger prevalence of the State sector in the economy in case the KPRF were the ruling party. Sounds all right to me.
But then, also in Russia, there are communists and communists. I was reminded of this fact by my ”own” Western Leftist paper. If the moron Bert Sundström mentioned previously bemoans Putin and keeps rooting for Navalny and Yabloko, the Western progressive folks writing in my weekly root for a similarly negligible non-entity with zilch influence and international reputation (possibly with the exception of George Soros and the CIA). Spouting a lot of nonsense about Putin and United Russia and the latter’s ”lackeys” in the KPRF.
They’ll never be majority or be able to form a government. Nothing wrong with a healthy size opposition, and the main thing none of western puppets will be able to enter the parliament or at least have more than a few representatives. In conclusion, nothing substantial is changing in Russian parrliament. Russia is heading in good direction.
“Communist should NEVER be allowed to take power in Russia again.”
Who is saying this? Only the people of the Russian Federation will decide. And it is none of your business to decide anything for others.
RT reports that the communists have gained more votes and that they had the backing of Navalny’s party. Apparently, the liberals are trying to get Communists into power so that their own party may be declared as the sole representative of democracy.
Nevertheless, it’s apparent that the United Russia has to abandon policies such as pension reforms if they want to continue their hold on power. Pro-western agents are doing much damage to their credibility.
Russia MUST do pension reform. This pension system cannot stay longer
Russia did a flawed pension reform sdvocated by the neoliberal Kudrin. It was going hrough the Duma after detailed econometric/demographic analysis showed that it would be detrimental to he overall economy, and Putin then did some quick, quite well-placed changes to the legislation to mitigate the worst aspects ot the pension reform. Such reforms should be evaluated in their socio-economic and demographic context and Putin was quick to undrstand that it was a mistake, because of that report, I assume. It cost him in popularlity to have submitted it to the Duma,and evidently that is till true to some degree, but I imagine that it also meant a decline in the influence of he neoliberal ideologues in Russian politics.
@Man With No Name
“RT reports that the communists have gained more votes and that they had the backing of Navalny’s party. ”
Narative has all traits of PRbs. It has purpose to make ilusion that Navalny & Co has much more popular support than in reality. This way they can claim any number between 1% and 25% as their supporters on top of what they actually have.
I am surprised that RT fell for this old PR trick.
Even if they did or not, the point is that support to communists has risen. I don’t think that such headliners would do anything beneficial to Russia’s domestic and foreign strategy. It is better to keep them at bay.
The system is similar to ours in Spain. I have been an observer for the communist party, Every party concurrrying was allowed to have representatives al the voting tables to oversee the ballots were at the counters rightly placed and available to the voters. We could contest any decision by the official poll workers, that are designated randomly and paid some money as a working day. E
We were volunteers but the party provided us with sanwiches and drinks.
Ever table had a list of voters asigned and they were checked and marked as they voted, Everyone had to produce an official ID or passport with photo.the parties representatives would sit at the table and check th IDs of check in there were enought ballots of their parties avalilable The average voters per table was 700 people. Sometimes in local elections there were mix-ups witn ballots belonging to adjacent towns that were sent wrongly by mail in advance, so the ballot belonged to a party but the list belonged to another town. We discussed and many times the wrong ballots were accepted as valid.
Polls closed at 20:00 , last votes inserted before closing where those coming by mail, either from sick people or people from abroad It took us less an hour and a half to count manually the votes, when finished the voting acts were signed by every representative at the polling tables sento to the central courtroom to be collected and added to the grand totals. so at 22:00 could start the official count made public to the media, normally at 6:00 am the following day or little later there were official results for the 80-90% of the votes.
No propaganda was allowed at the polling station,(there is a 24 hour lapsus before voting called Day of refelection, where electoral propaganda is forbidden . Post-vote enquries were allowed outside the polling station.
“No propaganda was allowed at the polling station,(there is a 24 hour lapsus before voting called”
Unlike Australia, where there are walls of advertising outside the polling booths, and party members handing out ” how to vote” cards to ingoing voters, with their party member first, of course. We find it highly disturbing – in NZ, all party political advertising must be removed 24 hrs before the election.
I remember having some Australians explain how to vote. It seems mind boggling complex and all that hoopla outside the polling booths seems needed.
In Canada we do not remove signs but all campaigning ends the day before the election, which is today now that I think of it.
Same thing in USA, people handing out leaflets to voters in line, instructing how to vote for their candidates, the best democracy in the world.
there is this fenomena of “chain voting” where I live.
we deposit the voting slips in an envelope and the envelope in the urn in front of the local representatives of the delegates.
so doode gets his voting slip, deposits nothing in his envelope and brings out the slip from the polling station to the awaiting local boss. here the slip gets filled and handed to the next participant, who deposits the filled out slip and brings out the empty one – ensuring the desired democratic outcome.
cheers.
I agree with Bosnian Croat.
25% is sad for Russia and I am very disappointed in the people voting for the communists.
Communists are about power and ideology, not the business of running a country.
They will always tell you what’s wrong but don’t have a clue how to solve it.
Today’s communists are like Navalny – will say whatever is needed to get votes and power.
They even held a protest supporting Navalny – knowing that he is a western puppet
The fact that communists did well is because they got votes from liberals – Yabloko did really badly and so did the LDPR Zhirinovskys party.
All those voters backed the communists –
The fact they did so shows that Russians have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
The danger to Russia always comes from within.
Look at who the communists put up – prettying young girls – young candidates – who was behind this strategy very focused on the ignorant internet generation who values image over substance
Zuganov did not come up with this strategy – the party has been infiltrated by people who see them as the best way to power.
They will destroy Russia
I think Putin and his people need to review what had happened as be warned and the communists.
China by the way is not communist – the ruling party is littered with billionaires and they believe in capitalism and globalism.
If they are upset about pension reform Russians need to grown up – look at the rest of the world
I have to work until 67 and no one asked me if I minded.
We don’t have enough young workers like Russia
Have babies increase your population and grown your country and economy
Haha, the Russians are hopeless; not living up to the expectations of infallible Western experts from all walks of life. This pronunciamento stands out as particularly illustrative:
The fact that communists did well is because they got votes from liberals – Yabloko did really badly and so did the LDPR Zhirinovskys party.
The idea of Russian liberals voting communist sounds interesting, but even if each and every single one of them did do that, they are obviously too few to have that kind of impact percentage-wise; sorry. The mass base of the KPRF are Russian workers and middle class people with zero liberal proclivities (and they surely amount to far more than 25% of the Russian population).
What Bosnian Croat (living in Australia) and James2 (probably also living in the Anglosphere) need to understand is that, in Russia, Communism has something to show for it; Liberalism and its twin Fascism have not. Communist Russia prevailed against both these manifestations of Western messianic brainrot in the common form of anti-Russian genocidalism. Putin and Zyuganov are both part of this heritage of Russian resiluence — deal with it.
Where does it matter where I come from?
Typical attitude that no one can speak against the communists?
What will you do cancel me? Communists have a good track record of this.
Communist produced Gorbachev- Yeltsin and all those shady oligarchs came up through the system.
The Party about all produced all the trash that dominated the 1990s they didn’t come from nowhere
You talk about the past achievements but you don’t want to talk about the major failures – the fact Russia collapsed twice in the 20th century – the death and destruction the separatist movements the terrorism – that is also communism
Look at the present – examine who the people are and what they represent- now today – not yesterday
– don’t look at them through rose coloured glasses!
They want power and will be aggressive and divisive to get it!!!
Look at them refusing to recognise the elections
They are disgusting undermining the system in their usual way
The west will love it – the 6th column is the communists
I will be proved right
You’re changing the subject, clearly dodging the issues:
Did the minuscule Russian liberal constituency vote for the KPRF? If yes, what imoact would that have on the KPRF’s score percentage-wise?
Are the KPRF’s voters predominantly pensioners living in the past? Or are you implying they consist of liberals (of which there are practically zero among Russia’s old people) ?
All you have provided above amounts to essentially baseless conjecture. I suggest you switch to some MSM site where people are more ideology-driven and — most notably — will take you for a very savvy human being,
has VVP won yet?
Dutch broadcasting showed the election as a complete shame and fake lacking all legitimacy, which is par for the course for everything Russian. All reporting, including correspondents who have lived in Moscow for years, is about how Putin runs everything, Putin is a malignant dictator, everything is poor and ramshackle, and the people are ignorant of their own condition.
According to the report, THE opposition was outlawed (THE opposition means Navalny).
The election was completely rigged, and the opposition has been more and more eliminated over the years.
Putin may enjoy some popularity, but all the officials from United Russia are less and less so and only come to power through rigged elections. Mail balloting has only made it easier to manipulate the outcomes.
[I was waiting for the comparison to the US election ‘lies’, but none was made]
I am too cynical and too removed to believe a word they say one way or the other.
They did , however, show (video) several incidents of an individual openly stuffing many ballots (scores) into the ballot box at the same time … without any attempt to conceal the actions for officials, public, or journalists. I have no idea how to interpret the video montage.
The conclusion could have been predicted last week: Elections in Putin’s autocratic Russia are just as bad as in the good old Communist days.
I have no idea how to interpret the video montage/i>
Are they the same videos they used last election?
I was thinking about this type of thing this morning and came to the conclusion that a friend of mine could knock together a Russian ballot box in about an hour. A visit to a stationary store and a few minutes with my computer and printer and I am ready to firm “Russian voting fraud”. Well I might need some obviously “Russian” pictures or posters on the wall.
@Webej
I’ve always been intrigued by the venomous Russophobic bile prevalent in the Netherlands. Sure, it’s a paradigmatically liberal, Euro-trash paradise with all sorts of perversions and drugs readily available everywhere, but that doesn’t strike me as an enough convincing reason for completely insane political Russophobia. As far as I know, there are no historical grudges that could explain this obsession either. Are the Dutch media owned by some particularly dedicated, die-hard anti-Russian power circles less known outside the country?
@Nussiminen: “I’ve always been intrigued by the venomous Russophobic bile prevalent in the Netherlands.”
Answer in 3 words: Royal Dutch Shell.
Same with the Royals in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, as reported both by you and by Tolef (above).
Hereditary incompetence intertwined with degenerate Anglo Zio Capitalism hopes to restore Royal Capitalist rule over the Baltic and the Arctic, from Amsterdam to Vladivostok.
‘Heriditary incompetence’, you mean like, inbreeding???
Cheers, M
Very bad comments about this article…. However, this is an interesting electoral result in Russia, and it will certainly affect Russian politics in the years to come — something that obviously about 21% of the Russians wanted for many reasons. Yes, President Putin will listen! The 5th column may be furious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As a follow-up, summarizing from https://76.ru/text/politics/2021/09/20/70146980/
Final results are expected Friday. United Russia won only a single mandate (the first woman cosmonaut, 84 year-old Valentina Tereshkova) out of five in Yaroslavl (one Communist, three for Fair Russia ).
United Russia improved compared with 2011, when the party received the worst result in the country in the Yaroslavl region.
The region’s leader among the parties was United Russia. 29.72% of the votes. However, the gap from the nearest competitor, the Communist Party, turned out to be quite insignificant — only 7% (the Communists received 22.74% of the vote). Fair Russia won 19.2% while the LDPR-8.97%, the New People party-7.86%.
It seems to me people are getting tired with taxes being spent and getting substandard quality on roads, sidewalks and public transport. We joked this morning, seeing the launch of another Russian Navy frigate, that the new sidewalks will have to wait a bit longer.
When we walk to the supermarket around the corner we pass “the lake”, a giant puddle that stretches across the road now for several years since the supermarket was constructed. The majority of sidewalks look like originals (which means cracked, with lots of puddles and no lowered curbs for baby carriages, handicapped or delivery persons). You would think governments knew about laser levels to have proper drainage of roads and sidewalks. Babushka has already broken her wrist twice because of a fall on an icy sidewalk. She again voted United Russia but that could easily change.
@Geneva Observer………so what you just described is every city across Canada, the problems faced by Russians are the same problems faced by ‘taxpayers’ world wide……pathetic return on our tax dollars spent.
At least Russia can decide who to sell it’s goods to, and they rest at night knowing they are somewhat protected from outside forces………..in Canada we got bears, wolves….and lots of fleeced sheep!
Cheers, M
The imperialists want to destroy the Russian Federation to put their hands on the ressources of the country. In that case, the roads and the pavements would get even worse.
So, it seems there is a market for shoes allowing to walk on ice.
Even in Geneva there are every winter some broken wrists.
Election day in Russia and there is a US-style mass killing at erm University. The guy killed a number of people, but was disabled by a cool police officer. Unlike the US, where the false flag patsy would be eliminated, here the perpetrator was taken alive. Let’s hope this Not-Dead Man Tells His Tale – who gave him the idea that today was a good day? etc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDhS-lwm6Hg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJL_yKAWs34
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgPfDnxv-ts
The last video, a blurred video showing the immeduiate actions after the guy was disabled, has been ‘age restricted’ by the omnipotent guardians of moral rectitude at YouTube.
I visited the Geneva Observer website and was unable to find this article. Has it been attributed correctly?
The fact that hardly more than 7% of Russians “think west” is disaster for color revolutionaires. Truly what Russians, especially those over 25 y old do understand is the value of stable while not stagnate country and its society. Weak leadership in Russia was western wet Dream.
I agree. The rise of the communists has just provided Russia with more strength and stability. The previous changes in the government regulations came on time. Russian people know better than foreigners (who may think that their opinions should be heard).
Well, on cue the UK Government basically claimed that the whole Russian election was rigged. I don’t bother listening to that sort of rubbish, it’s a bit like saying every Russian athlete dopes. Basically, the UK said that there was loads of ballot stuffing in certain rural regions, where the United Russia vote percentage was vastly higher than in Moscow.
The same UK sources didn’t detect any ballot stuffing in the USA.
A group from Moscow’s election headquarters will recount all parliamentary election votes made online, last weekend, after opposition figures accused organizers of rigging the contest in favor of the ruling United Russia party. That’s according to Alexey Venediktov, a well-known Russian journalist and editor of liberal outlet Echo of Moscow, who was chosen to head the capital’s election observation headquarters. According to business daily Kommersant, the veteran broadcaster explained that the process would not be legal in nature, but rather a “reconciliation of results”.The newspaper reports that a public audit group for e-voting will also be set up, which will be chaired by Grigori Melkonyants, co-chairman of Golos, an election monitor recognized in Russia as a foreign agent, which was excluded from conducting observations during the vote. Golos has claimed that a substantial number of ballots supposedly cast for the ruling party were fraudulent. From September 17-19, Russian citizens went to the polls to choose from 14 parties and other independent candidates vying for 450 seats in the country’s parliament. On Monday, the day after the voting was completed, the country’s Communist Party announced that it would refuse to recognize the electronic votes cast in Moscow, alleging falsifications. Russia introduced electronic voting this year in nine of its 85 regions. Although all of the other parts of the country using the technology reported their results shortly after the polls closed, Moscow’s declaration was delayed. Some opposition figures believe that this time was used to rig the election.
Suspicions were raised after the results in certain constituencies changed dramatically after electronic votes were counted, sometimes overwhelmingly flipping the result in favour of the United Russia candidate, the party that supports President Vladimir Putin.
Via RT
Oh deary me.