![]() “Only up to 8 million votes were possibly added to the final count of the turnout,” Shiplkin told Vedomosti. The mathematician Sergey Shpilkin said the level of falsification during the 2018 presidential election was low. “Still we will only get a full picture of the violations later,” Melkonyants added. “Although some irregularities were clearly present direct falsifications during this vote were less pronounced than previously,” Grigory Melkonyants, cochair of the independent elections monitor Golos, told the BBC. According to independent monitors, the numbers provided by Russia’s electoral officials could actually be more trustworthy this time than in previous election years. ![]() Reports of ballot stuffing and multiple voting were not critical to the final result. Some of the Russian regions, especially the usual suspects, like Dagestan, Chechnya and Kabardino Balkaria, got out the vote big time too: both the turnout and the vote for Putin exceeded 90 percent. Those were mostly hospitals, maternity wards, and prisons. In Moscow alone 39 constituencies had a turnout of 100 percent. “Administrative mobilization” or pressure applied through government structures, state-run media, the army or and state-owned companies to maximize the turnout, was reported as this election’s most common way of influencing the results. Russia’s system is still a work in progress and if the present tendencies persist the regime would not have any problems with the turnout come next election,” the political scientist Grigory Golosov told the Vedomosti business daily. Similar regimes would mobilize turnouts exceeding 80 percent. ![]() “The result was typical or a bit lower than in most authoritarian regimes. After all, 56 million votes is just half of Russia’s registered 109 million voters. Still, there is room for improvement, authoritarian improvement that is. The Putin of 2018 essentially ran against the Putin of 2012, 2004, and 2000 and the 2018 version crushed all previous incarnations. Fifty-six million voted for Putin, which was more than in any election for any presidential candidate before, television anchors and commentators triumphantly emphasized. By the time Vladimir Putin’s fourth term ends in 2024 he will have been in power for 25 years.Īlmost 68 percent of the electorate turned out. A lot of soul-searching is due for Russians whose politics differs from the creed endorsed by the Kremlin. ![]()
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