James Kilner
March 18, 2024 — 12.12pm

From free food and entertainment at polling stations to threats and disappearing ink, the Kremlin was determined to cajole Russians into voting for Vladimir Putin in this presidential election.

Leaked Kremlin documents have shown that it wanted Putin to win 80 per cent of the vote on a high turnout over the weekend to prove that Russians support his war in Ukraine. Putin had some 87 per cent of the vote with 90 per cent of the count completed. And to achieve this analysts said that it built a vote-fixing toolkit.

“The authorities use various items from their ‘menu of manipulation’ to secure the results they want,” said Ben Noble, associate professor of Russian studies at UCL.

These techniques can be split into three categories: candidate fixing; voter fixing; and result fixing. The first category involves whittling down the candidates to a “Kremlin-approved” list headed, of course, by Putin. This year, two anti-war candidates were disqualified on technical grounds leaving Putin to trounce fake opponents who, anyway, support his policies.

https://www.theage.com.au/world/europe/free-food-threats-and-invisible-ink-how-the-kremlin-made-russian-vote-for-putin-20240318-p5fd86.html

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