The crazy thing is that they got internationally and publicly called out on the really egregious statistical anomolies before, like those visible horizontal lines on the vote share chart showing up where boxes were stuffed just enough to meet a specific party “floor on vote share required” target. It’s not complicated to hide that. United Russia would just need to randomize said targets. But they can’t even be bothered to hide the flagrantly-visible-on-the-surface stuff.
The first time around, maybe you do a shitty job and don’t expect it to be picked up on. But by now, you know that it’s going to get identified and still just don’t care.
I could believe that a statistician could still go digging and find anomolies that are harder to hide with more-careful stuffing, but that’s not even necessary the way this is done. These are flagrant, already-explicitly-identified-in-the-past, not-hard-to-hide ones.
EDIT: The last election when I saw an article on this, I even commented and said “well, that’s the last time you’ll be able to use that method to identify ballot box stuffing, because next election, United Russia will have it fixed”. Fast forward and…nope. The level of shits given is just mind-bogglingly low.
I mean, if you want to do that, why even bother with elections? Just call the guy a tsar or whatever and end the rigamarole. Or, hell, do the North Korean approach, where you have a non-secret ballot and only a “I vote for or against Kim Jong Un” option, where theoretically if Kim Jong Un were to lose, there would be a second election with other options to replace him on it.
The crazy thing is that they got internationally and publicly called out on the really egregious statistical anomolies before, like those visible horizontal lines on the vote share chart showing up where boxes were stuffed just enough to meet a specific party “floor on vote share required” target. It’s not complicated to hide that. United Russia would just need to randomize said targets. But they can’t even be bothered to hide the flagrantly-visible-on-the-surface stuff.
The first time around, maybe you do a shitty job and don’t expect it to be picked up on. But by now, you know that it’s going to get identified and still just don’t care.
I could believe that a statistician could still go digging and find anomolies that are harder to hide with more-careful stuffing, but that’s not even necessary the way this is done. These are flagrant, already-explicitly-identified-in-the-past, not-hard-to-hide ones.
EDIT: The last election when I saw an article on this, I even commented and said “well, that’s the last time you’ll be able to use that method to identify ballot box stuffing, because next election, United Russia will have it fixed”. Fast forward and…nope. The level of shits given is just mind-bogglingly low.
Thats just flaunting your power play.
I mean, if you want to do that, why even bother with elections? Just call the guy a tsar or whatever and end the rigamarole. Or, hell, do the North Korean approach, where you have a non-secret ballot and only a “I vote for or against Kim Jong Un” option, where theoretically if Kim Jong Un were to lose, there would be a second election with other options to replace him on it.
A veneer of legitimate democracy.
Yeah, some countries don’t want to deal with fascists, but this makes it easier to explain. Even if everyone knows it’s a sham.