IT DRIVES ME CRAZY. No, really, it absolutely drives me crazy. And don’t think I’m about to go on about some prison-related nonsense. Almost everything here is infuriating—that’s by design. I deal with it by cultivating a kind of prison zen: a calm, detached attitude toward idiotic rules that literally change every day. It works with mixed success, but I’m trying. What you simply cannot learn to take calmly, though, is some of your comments. I ask for selected ones to be printed out so I can understand what you think about Smart Voting. Most of them are fine, of course, but there’s this whole segment of whiners that really drives me up the wall. - Oh, why should I go vote? Nothing depends on me. - All the candidates are the same anyway. - There’s no point in replacing one lot with another; I’d rather do something else. The helplessness and submission are so extreme that you’d think it was you in prison, not me. As if you can’t do anything. As if you don’t have enough followers to campaign. As if you’re so busy you don’t even have time to vote. Listen, I have to march in formation to lunch, and the last time I used the internet feels like ages ago. But I absolutely do not think that means I can’t change anything. And I’m not sitting here mourning my lost ability to speak to millions through a YouTube channel, do livestreams, and so on. Do you know why? Because I’m not comparing myself to Alexei Navalny when he was free—when he had resources, an office, and campaign headquarters. I’m comparing myself to Alexei Navalny who does nothing. Who sits around idle, grieving over his imaginary helplessness. I want to be better than that version of him, and that’s not hard. You just have to do the basic things, make at least some contribution. And you can do the same. You—the one who got a candidate’s name through Smart Voting and went to vote—are 1000% more influential and powerful than the version of you that just whines and does nothing. Bring a relative into Smart Voting, and you’ll be 3000% cooler. Put up a call to support Smart Voting on your page, and compared to your lazy self, you’re basically a political Terminator. Listen. Since 2003—that is, for ALMOST 20 YEARS—independent candidates have not won district races in elections to the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament). To break that pattern, we came up with Smart Voting and tested it successfully. Aren’t you curious to try it yourselves? And at the same time become a better version of yourselves?