Researchers at the New Economic School (the Russian one, not the British one) have published a study on the impact of election observers on State Duma elections. Here is the study itself (in American—i.e., English). And here is how Lenta.ru writes about it (in Russian): Researchers from the New Economic School—Ruben Enikolopov (currently at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton), Vasily Korovkin, Maria Petrova, and Konstantin Sonin—together with Higher School of Economics researcher Alexei Zakharov, found that during the 2011 State Duma elections, the presence of observers at polling stations significantly changed the voting results recorded there. This allowed the authors to establish a lower bound for the level of election fraud in Moscow. The results were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In their article, the researchers analyzed the work of the civic organization “Citizen Observer.” In the experiment, 156 polling stations were randomly selected out of Moscow’s 3,164, and volunteers from the organization monitored voting at those stations. A total of 210 special-status polling stations (in hospitals, military units, and so on) were excluded, and the random assignment was carried out within each of 125 territorial subdivisions. The authors found that the distribution of votes among parties differed in a statistically significant way between the control polling stations and those where observers were present (with a 1 percent margin of error). This difference persisted despite the fact that the experimental group included polling stations where observers reported violations of election law, and some observers were removed before voting ended. What’s interesting is that, beyond the obvious conclusion that observers make it harder to rig elections and that the results for the “party of crooks and thieves” (a popular opposition nickname for United Russia) are lower where they are present, the NES researchers established the minimum level of election fraud in Moscow.
So if you voted in Moscow, you can be sure that these two nice gentlemen took a bite out of your vote (and every other vote) by at least 11 percentage points in favor of their party.
I’m sure that if the sample had been larger and had included more polling stations in the south and southeast of Moscow, where “United Russia” supposedly “won” as much as 75%, those 11 points would easily have turned into 25. This study, by the way, once again shows just how well the real political preferences of Muscovites are reflected in government. Both federal and regional. Out of 11 prefects, all 11 are members of United Russia. Out of 35 deputies in the Moscow City Duma, 32 are from United Russia and 3 from the Communist Party. A Moscow City Duma in which United Russia held 36% (let’s grant that) would probably be more useful to the city than the gang currently sitting there (91% United Russia). And just yesterday, Moscow deputies, “in the interests of city residents,” passed a law under which even solo pickets will now be banned. Car rallies are banned too. Yes, and they’ve also graciously bestowed a favor on Muscovites who want to take part in public demonstrations. Now we have “Hyde Parks.” At Gorky Park and Sokolniki. Vedomosti has a good editorial on the subject: In our case, the Moscow government responds to a serious question about the problem of public demonstrations in the style of Soviet satire: “Go to Hyde Park, to London in the 1850s.” It is impossible to take this seriously. It is an outright attempt to play dumb, and that is evident even in the choice of venue. The proposed sites included Gorky Park, Sokolniki, Bolotnaya Square, Luzhniki, and the site of the demolished Rossiya Hotel. In the end, the working group chose Gorky Park and Sokolniki. Why not Losiny Ostrov (Elk Island National Park)? Why am I saying all this? Because instead of lying on your side doing nothing, sign up to serve on a precinct election commission with voting rights while that is still possible. It’s more of a hassle than being an observer, but also far more effective. http://uik.rosvybory.org/register Update: I’m hopeless at math, and it’s actually much worse. Study co-author Konstantin Sonin ( ksonin ), vice rector of the New Economic School, says that in fact they “took” about a quarter—25**%, not 11%. **Because 11 is not percent, but “percentage points.” 36% instead of 47% is roughly a quarter less.