We just had a briefing at the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation), and everyone was laughing at me because I kept exclaiming, “This can’t be happening!!! Are they complete idiots?!”
They were laughing because it’s 2016, and if anyone should have stopped being surprised by now, it’s me.
The reason is that the ACF candidates running in the elections in Barvikha had just come back from a meeting with the new head of the Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova (that was what the briefing was about).
The meeting took place because of the blatantly obvious vote rigging happening in these small local elections.
Here’s some very simple math so you can see what’s going on: in a five-seat district (the candidates who finish from 1st to 5th become deputies), where four ACF candidates are running, there are 3,000 voters; turnout will be around 20 percent (it was 27 percent in the previous election, but that was on the nationwide single voting day); so 600 people will come to the polls; United Russia organized early voting and dragged in 150 migrants and various random thugs. That is 25% of total turnout. Almost all of them were registered a week ago at a single house, owned by a local United Russia member; So as of yesterday, the local election commission and United Russia had already stuffed 25% of the ballots.
So at the meeting with the Central Election Commission, our candidates said exactly what they thought about all this.
The results were as follows (spoiler: none whatsoever)
Pamfilova said she would “send the documents to the prosecutor’s office for review, and they will look into it within 30 days.” The election is in a week.
Pamfilova will send an observer to the election so that he can “report to her on what is happening.”
CEC chief Pamfilova believes that people running in elections should be prepared to face criminal cases:
The only thing that truly upset and offended CEC chief Pamfilova was this: on Navalny’s website, they depicted me in a fascist uniform.
So now, here’s why I was outraged while everyone else was laughing at me.
The meeting with the head of the CEC ended. Scandal, uproar, all that. All eyes are on Barvikha. The fraudsters should at least lie low for a while. But then 4 p.m. came, early voting began, and within an hour another 20 people voted early at the local election commission—people who had been registered a week earlier at that same “rubber apartment” (an address used to register large numbers of people) linked to United Russia.
When you hear someone say, “Well, Pamfilova will definitely be better than Churov,” punch them in the face immediately. She’ll be worse.