The Reaper system is wonderful because it is one of the key tools for taking on United Russia (the ruling political party).
How do they keep us off the ballot? Some people, like me, get turned into criminals and are then barred from running. But mostly they just force us to collect an enormous, absurd number of signatures—so many that gathering them is practically impossible—and then, for those who do manage to collect them, they declare them fake.
That is why we created the Reaper system in Novosibirsk—a clever database where we enter data from signature sheets, information on collectors, their route assignments, and the results of checks on the signatures they bring in.
As I wrote earlier, our signatures go through a multi-stage review by handwriting experts. What I had not mentioned before is that we also verify signatures through call-center calls and cross-check them against every database we could find (Big Brother is watching you, yes).
For example, what is Reaper doing today?
1) Entering 2,000 signatures by 3:00 p.m. There are 12 stations operating (that is, 12 computers, each with an operator sitting at it).
2) Starting at 11:00 a.m., a lawyer and a handwriting expert began the third full review of the signatures.
3) After 3:00 p.m. (once the final 2,242 signatures have been entered), the workstations switch to classifying the signatures and signature sheets that passed the third review into the following categories: clean, reserve, defective, empty.
4) Reaper’s second team begins crossing out the previously identified invalid passport entries and duplicates from the sheets.
That is Reaper today, now that we have collected more signatures than required (16,808 versus the required 11,722).
And yesterday, Reaper looked like this:
The entire city of Novosibirsk was divided into routes covered by our collectors (250 people!!) in the best traditions of sweep operations and checkpoints (the checkpoints are our campaign cubes—5 to 7 of them every day).
It is genuinely a massive undertaking, and I am proud that our team managed to get it running under unfavorable conditions.
But in the end, we will have THE MOST PERFECT SIGNATURES anyone has ever collected in Russia.
I say this because half an hour ago, the Novosibirsk election commission announced that it would check not 50 percent of the submitted signatures, as before, but 100 percent of them. They have realized that what we have is not just enthusiastic volunteers, but a combat-ready humanoid robot, and they want to use every possible chance to keep us off the ballot.
It will not work. Our signatures could be submitted to the Chamber of Weights and Measures as the gold standard.
Thanks to Reaper and to every wonderful person working inside it.