Voter turnout in this election as of 3:00 p.m. is 18.56%. That means 1,331,971 people have come to the polls out of Moscow’s 7,176,568 registered voters. Not surprising: for months, the zombie box (a derogatory slang term for television) has been saying in every news broadcast that the outcome of the election was already decided. But there is another side to this. Low turnout means more opportunities for motivated groups of voters to influence the result. And it seems to me that you and I are quite a motivated group. Everything around us strongly motivates us: from unjustified housing and utilities charges to those jailed in the “Bolotnaya case” (the prosecution of protesters after the 2012 Bolotnaya Square rally); from Putin’s friends building the Moscow metro and roads at twice the market price to the remarkable children buying apartments for 100 million rubles (about $3 million at the time). We want to change everything. And we know how to change it. We can change everything. I can’t tell you here about the exit poll results (that would be illegal), but I can tell you this for certain: to force a second round, we need one small extra effort. Get up and go vote. If you’ve already voted, pick up the phone and make sure that 2 or 3 of your acquaintances go and vote. If you’ve exhausted your phone list, go into your apartment building and knock on a few doors. No one will think you’re crazy. The worst you’re likely to run into is a neighbor who shrugs and gives you a strange look. That’s fine—there are more important things at stake. If, with one last push, we bring 100,000 people to the polls right now—which is entirely doable—that would amount to 7.5% of the vote at the current turnout.
Then you and I will be discussing the election results not now, but on September 22—at the final stage of the second round. And it will be a Moscow and a Russia living in some different political reality. If we do not make this final effort, then for a long time to come we will keep sending each other this quote on social media: Idiot (from Ancient Greek ἰδιώτης — “private person”): Idiot (an Ancient Greek term) — a person who lives apart from public life, does not participate in the general assembly of the citizens of the polis, and takes no part in other forms of state and public democratic governance. Please share this link everywhere you can, and do it right now. Thank you.