| Following the State Duma elections this month, the opposition
conceded that election fraud had been no worse than usual. Communist Party
spokesman Ilya Ponomaryov noted with characteristic optimism that vote-rigging
at the 1996 presidential election had been officially proven this year,
casting doubt on the legality of Boris Yeltsin's second term.
But that no longer matters. Our president is Vladimir Putin, and so
far nothing has been officially proven regarding the 2000 election. Ponomaryov
reckons that the opposition's claims of voter fraud in this year's election
will be officially confirmed by 2009, and everyone will realize that Yabloko
should have had representation in the next Duma. The Communists are not
afforded even this cold comfort. In their parallel count, the party received
even fewer votes than in the official results.
Given the amount of time it takes to set the record straight in Russia,
we should get a head start now on documenting voter fraud in the 2007
elections. We already have a pretty good idea how vote-rigging works.
Alexander Saly's Duma commission turned up a wealth of useful information,
and the parallel vote count at Fairgame.ru has demonstrated its effectiveness.
Until recently, Russian democracy was based on election fraud pluralism.
In 1999, some governors lent a helping hand to Unity, others to Fatherland,
and some even gave the Communists and SPS a boost. The party of power
is now consolidated, however. The governors have been brought into line,
and there is every reason to proclaim that democracy is under threat.
From now on, the government machine at all levels and in all regions will
further a single cause.
Pluralism does remain, however, when it comes to the methods of committing
fraud, which vary according to local customs. In one region they deliver
the ballot boxes half full, in another the polling stations close early
and the staff spend the remaining time filling in the unused ballots.
And in some regions they simply forget to open the polls. Chechnya excels
in this regard, especially the Vedensky district. An interesting correlation
has emerged: When the rebels are active, the party of power receives more
votes. Should the armed conflict spread beyond Chechnya in time for the
next Duma elections, the party of power will undoubtedly enjoy a resounding
victory in the affected regions.
Such flagrant violations don't fly in most regions, although you can
fiddle around with the early vote and the mobile ballot boxes; and "dead
souls" of one sort or another can easily be added to the voter lists.
When an acquaintance of mine turned up to vote she found that an unknown
man was registered in her apartment. "Don't worry," said the
poll worker who handed her the ballot. "He died a long time ago."
The process of tracking down ghosts is time-consuming but well worth
the effort. If the cheats aren't caught red-handed at the polling station,
little can be done afterward.
The Communists and Yabloko have been trying for ages to stop the practice
of falsifying election protocols. Observers are provided with an official
copy of the protocol at the polling station. The originals are forwarded
on to the territorial election commissions. Observers then tally up the
numbers in their protocols, and the territorial election commissions do
the same. They're working with the same documents, but for some reason
their totals never coincide. Either everyone involved has suddenly forgotten
the rules of arithmetic, or on the contrary they have mastered them completely.
If the opposition's allegations of creative accounting are justified,
then Russia's mid-level election commissions are staffed by some very
talented people.
Votes are stolen from candidates who stand no chance of getting elected,
who don't have the resources to monitor the vote effectively, or who are
least likely to take their grievances to court. The Fairgame.ru system
set up by the Communists works according to the same principles as the
official system. And while it is less powerful, and manned by fewer people,
it actually worked faster than the official system. Those creative calculations
must slow things down a lot.
The 2003 elections were a sort of historical watershed. Thanks to Fairgame,
we know how many votes were stolen and from whom. This provides the system's
creators with a certain aesthetic pleasure, and the victims of election
fraud with a measure of moral satisfaction. But where the elections themselves
are concerned, Stalin's inspired principle remains in force: The important
thing is not how they vote but how we count.
Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.
See also:
the original at
www.themoscowtimes.com
State Duma elections 2003
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