A brief recap of previous episodes:
Putin decided to install United Russia candidate Tarasenko as governor of Primorye (Russia’s Primorsky Krai in the Far East). To make that happen, he personally endorsed him and even traveled there. Special events were staged to push this crook through.
It didn’t work. In the first round, Tarasenko got 46%. A runoff was scheduled.
Before the runoff, Putin backed Tarasenko even more aggressively. After all, this is one of the Kremlin’s core articles of faith: everyone supposedly loves Putin, so any candidate he publicly endorses is bound to win. So all state media threw their full weight behind Tarasenko.
The people of Primorye decided to tell Putin to get lost, shatter that article of faith, and elect the Communist candidate Ishchenko, who had received 25% in the first round.
The Kremlin could not allow Putin to suffer such a public humiliation, so at the last moment it rigged the election in the most outrageous way imaginable.
The level of outrage, both in Primorye and across the country, became so intense that the results at several polling stations had to be annulled. Then the election itself was canceled, stealing victory from Ishchenko. The results were recorded like this:
The Presidential Administration decided to fix the situation like this: a) bring in a new candidate — multimillionaire Kozhemyako b) keep Ishchenko off the ballot c) run an opposition-style campaign on Kozhemyako’s behalf d) if necessary, rig it again e) but give Kozhemyako such puppet opponents that they would not merely refrain from resisting fraud, but would actually help disrupt election monitoring and stuff ballots.
And that is exactly what they did. Kozhemyako ran as an independent, and his campaign rhetoric went so far that the only thing he didn’t shout was “Putin is a thief.” I talked about this in my latest program. He was demanding that the sinister federal authorities — and his own United Russia party — return the region’s money from the federal budget, along with other equally absurd things.
None of this helped. The people of Primorye saw through the whole scam perfectly well and once again organized a spontaneous “Smart Voting” effort. Despite all the tricks, Kozhemyako was unable to win in the first round, receiving the same share of the vote as Tarasenko.
So what was Putin supposed to do when voters rejected his second candidate too? They stuffed the ballot boxes again.
So the official result is this: Kozhemyako — 62%
But even now there is more than enough mathematical evidence of fraud.
Sergei Shpilkin — one of the leading specialists in this field — convincingly shows that roughly 170,000 votes were stuffed. Kozhemyako’s real result was the same as Tarasenko’s: 46%.
The real turnout was about 37% (the official figure was 46.3%).
And the well-known electoral geographer Alexander Kireev clearly demonstrates how, at dozens of polling stations, the results were rigidly adjusted to match a preset target — not only for Kozhemyako, but also for the three token candidates, with exactly the same figures fabricated for all of them.
Even though the outcome was highly predictable, this campaign turned out to be quite interesting and instructive.
So what conclusions can we draw for ourselves?
On the one hand, it’s obvious. The election was a sham. The Kremlin falsified everything. It humiliated the people of Primorye.
On the other hand, the people of Primorye humiliated the Kremlin — and Putin personally — even more. Yes, the governor will be the one they forced on them, but everyone around them, and not just in Primorye, will know perfectly well that Kozhemyako is sitting in that office only because of fraud.
And most importantly, the whole country now knows that Putin’s endorsement, Putin’s supporters, and the administrative resources of the state are NO LONGER ENOUGH to secure victory for the desired candidate.
Even the completely falsified election in Primorye showed us a great deal. We look at the numbers and understand: a) “Spoiling ballots” does not work. About 4% were invalidated, which is quite high by Russian election standards (usually 1–2%), but not dramatically high; in the first round in September it was also around 4%. b) The “systemic opposition” has no real electorate of its own — not the Communist Ishchenko, not the LDPR candidate Andreichenko, and not the other candidates from the “system parties.” They never had one, and they still don’t. So, for example, Ishchenko’s call to spoil ballots produced no statistically significant result. There is simply a protest electorate, and there is a huge divide in society: for Putin and against Putin, for the authorities and against them. c) If there had been no fraud, Kozhemyako’s result would have exactly matched Tarasenko’s in the first round in September — 46% with turnout at around 35%, which is roughly 15% of the total electorate. That’s it: for the Putin camp, that is the limit, the ceiling. And not only in Primorye — in any region. They drag in 10% of the beaten-down and dependent through administrative mobilization, and 5% are officials, their family members, and enthusiastic idiots waving Novorossiya flags, believing that only Putin can save us from the Rothschilds, Martians, and Elvira Nabiullina. c) The purely technical candidate Andreichenko got the same 25% of the vote that the technical candidate Ishchenko got in September. That is the protest-vote potential right there, immediately visible. And of course it is even larger among those who did not vote at all, quite reasonably seeing no point in elections without a real choice. But when there is a runoff, when they see that participation makes sense and that something can be changed, they show up. d) What happened completely refutes one of the key arguments against our “Smart Voting”: namely, what difference does it make to the Kremlin whether a United Russia candidate wins or a candidate from the LDPR or the Communist Party, since it’s all supposedly the same thing. Well, just look at the election in Primorye and you will see how very much it is not the same, and what resources were thrown into securing Kozhemyako’s victory. Because the Kremlin understands perfectly well: when people vote against a United Russia candidate, they are voting against Putin. When a United Russia candidate loses, Putin loses. And most importantly, “Smart Voting” works even on its own. Because voters try to act rationally. No one told the 25% who voted for Ishchenko in the first round in September that the most painful scenario for the authorities would be to vote for Andreichenko in December — they somehow figured it out themselves. Voters understand that there are no real elections — but there is a way to hurt and unsettle United Russia, if they vote tactically for another candidate. In other words, the trend toward “Smart Voting” objectively exists. Our task is to catch that wave and strengthen it.
So take part in “Smart Voting.” Register. Here is the blocked website. Here is the mirror.
Smart Voting is a very simple tactic, but it works.