Graph Shows Fraud in Russian Elections

gaika writes "A graph in the best traditions of Edward Tufte shows how the voting was rigged in Russian parliament elections. Initially some regions were showing higher than 100% attendance, but later on everything was corrected, or way too much corrected, as the correlation between winning party's vote and attendance now stands at 90%. I guess the people who have rigged the vote have never heard about Correlation Cofficient."

Why?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Putin's 7% cap on political parties pretty much annihilated most of the opposition. Why did they need to add votes? Out of habit?

Re:

[Divebus (860563)]

Why go through the trouble? In America, all you need are some alleged loose chads to win.

Deadly Power Games in the Kremlin

[reporter (666905)]

This election was clearly rigged. According to a report [guardian.co.uk] by the "Guardian Unlimited", "in Chechnya 99.3% of the population were said to have voted for Putin's party [...] while in the republic of Mordovia the figure was apparently 109%." How does a politician earn 109% of the votes without rigging? In 2004, Gennady Zyuganov, head of the Communist Party, had insightfully warned, "This is not an election, it's a special [Kremlin] operation with a predetermined result." ("The Washinton Post", 2004 March 14)

Yet, why would Czar Vladimir Putin go through all this trouble to produce an impressive showing at the polls? He is already quite popular. His party, United Russia, could have easily won control of the Duma without the election rigging.

"The Economist" has finally provided an answer [economist.com] to this puzzling question. "The answer almost certainly lies in the ever more vicious--and open--rivalry among the Kremlin's political clans. Perhaps Mr Putin upset so many rich and powerful people that the prospect of losing control over the transition of power may simply have been too dangerous for his inner circle, and for himself. For all his talk about foreign threats and domestic enemies, what Mr Putin really fears is his entourage and a war among the clans. Winston Churchill once described the Kremlin's political tussles as being like a fight among bulldogs under a carpet: outsiders hear plenty of growling but have few clues about the victor's identity until it emerges."

Renegade political factions (run by former and current members of the FSB, successor of the KGB) operate within and outside the Kremlin. Each faction is like a gang, and the gangs kill each other. They answer to no one. So far, Putin has used his power to keep the factions under control.

Putin needed an impressive showing in the election in order to demonstrate his political power -- to the siloviki. He controls the United Russia party. Since the party won more than 66% of the seats in the Duma (due to the rigged election), the party -- and Putin -- can alter the constitution at will.

Of course, Putin is gambling that his scheme will work. He may lose the gamble. One of the renegade factions may assassinate him.

In this context, you can understand the comments [wsj.com] by Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace Prize for releasing the Eastern Europeans from the yoke of Soviet oppression. He has criticized the steadily eroding freedoms that he initiated in Russia in the late 1980s, but he has refrained from directly criticizing Czar Vladimir Putin.

Putin is indeed a czar, but he is a far better ruler than one of the thugs in the siloviki. These thugs likely killed both Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya. Even if Putin wanted to solve their murders, he has no power to do so. If he attempted to find the killers, then he may be killed.

P.S.
"The Economist" seems to provide much better analysis of Russian politics than Washington provides. What exactly are our Russian "experts" in Washington doing?

Re:Why?

[ftsf (886792)]

didn't you see the futurama movie!!?!

Re:Why?

[Escogido (884359)]

2/3 of the Russian Duma (parliament) has the authority to amend the Constitution, and of course they want to be able to do that by themselves. And they barely made it - they will have 310 +/- 5 seats out of 450.

Re:Why?

[Escogido (884359)]

Well there are actually going to be 4 of them in the pairlament, and no, communists are usually not really negotiating anything no matter what. They are living pretty much in the 90s, keeping their slogans that boil down to 'down with the anti-people government/regime' which is there for like 10 years already. Their electorate (older people) are going fast due to natural reasons, but this time they seem to have got some votes of the dissenters who don't take Zhirinovsky serious and who realize that Fair Russia is not any different from United Russia.

Re:Why?

[ugen (93902)]

Why you ask? I'll tell you why!

Realistically, United Russia was going to win about %50 in "unrigged" elections. This is a simple majority, sufficient to pass regular laws. However, Putin needs constitutional majority (which is defined as 2/3 of the votes) to be able to pass constitutional amendments and various important laws related to status of Russia in union such as union with Belorussia. Now 2/3 for those advanced math majors is about %66 :) And, guess what, United Russia at this point has %64 of all votes which, what with rounding up and all, will be that magic constitutional majority. D-oh.

Re:Why?

[cptdondo (59460)]

Heh. If you read the Russian, Chechnya (or however you spell it in western alphabet) has the highest turnout - 10,000% - and a perfect score - 100% - in voting for Putin.

Lesse - last I heard, they were still fighting the Chechen rebels, nyet?

Re:Why?

[arivanov (12034)]

I suspect he did not. In fact I suspect none of his immediate surrounding did. As many people pointed out they had no need whatsoever to do it.

Now, cronies and henchmen in remote regions are a completely different story.

Realistically, the feudalism never went away in the Soviet Union (and Russia for that matter). Many of the remote places and nearly all of the so called "autonomous republics" and "autonomous areas" are ruled in a feudal manner. In fact usually the rule inherited from father to son.

It is essential for a vassal to demonstrate his true loyalty to the ruling feudal. In the middle ages it was the oath of allegiance. Now it is votes. This is exactly what is happening here. Chechnia, various tatar states and other fiefdoms demonstrating their loyalty to the king. Move along people, there is nothing we can do to fix it for at least a 100 more years. Old habits die hard. Really hard.

Also, they are a blip on the overall statistics radar. In total we are talking about less votes than Moscow and St Petersburg which were not rigged and had the highest opposition representation which were not rigged this way. In fact I would expect less than 2-3% of the overall vote to be subjected to such rigging (the fiefdoms in question are not particularly large).

The real killer was the strict prohibition on foreign funding.

There were anything between 30-200 million of American money behind every mid-right wing win in Eastern Europe for the last 15 years (I have personally seen some of it). Without this level of support none of the right-wing "blue" muppets would have gotten even close to winning an election in Bulgaria, Romania, etc. By yanking the plug and making sure that none of the local oligarghs gives money to the opposition Putin has guaranteed his win. The 7% was simply a topup just to make sure.

Whoopsie!

[mctk (840035)]

"I guess the people who have rigged the vote have never heard about Correlation Cofficient."

And apparently neither has the person who wrote the summary.

Re:

[Bob54321 (911744)]

Exactly. Correlation != Causation. But still...

Cover up the accent...

[SerpentMage (13390)]

I like your comment "How even then he tried to cover his accent..."

Hmmm, he wants to blend in with the natives... I wonder why? hmmm, let's think on this one...

Oh yeah I got it, maybe because he was a spy?

I remember when Bush met Putin for the first time and said, "I looked the man in the eyes..."

At that point I thought, Bush, are you daft? The man in front of you was (is?) a spy and he would try to make himself appear like the Dali Lama himself...

I once asked a Russian when Putin was elected whether he was good or bad for the country. He replied, "does it matter?" I was completely surprised by this answer. He explained himself and said, "Mother Russia has always been ruled by an iron fist, and no politics whether communism, a tzar or free market will change that. Russia is one of the few places where a powerful person will drive over the shoes of a policeman, and the policeman will smile and say, "thank-you you are free to do that again""

Re:Whoopsie!

[Minwee (522556)]

Yeah. Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true.

In soviet Russia

[GWLlosa (800011)]

Ballots stuff you?

You don't need brains to be a dictator

[crath (80215)]

I guess the people who have rigged the vote have never heard about Correlation Cofficient.

You don't need brains to run a dictatorship, just a rampant willingness to fuck people over. Reminds me of some of our own leaders here in The West!

Re:You don't need brains to be a dictator

[by Anonymous Coward]

just a rampant willingness to fuck people over.

Depending on the context of that statement, it could describe both our current and former leader.

Re:You don't need brains to be a dictator

[tftp (111690)]

Vote for Giuliani and get both options!

Well what did you expect?

[explosivejared (1186049)]

I mean really! Dissident journalists have been murdered. A rival was imprisoned for political reasons. Gee, and I thought this election had a shot to be a fair one! Anyone surprised by this doesn't follow Russian politics at all. Putin doesn't play around. He used one of the most devious Russian reversals of all time. He found that in Soviet Russia corruption empowers you absolutely!

"rigged Elections"

[Brad1138 (590148)]

American Democracy is truly spreading across the globe.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Are you out of your mind? No, this isn't American democracy. This is sickness in its true form, also known as revolutionary leftism.

No, Russia is going towards fascist dictatorship via right-wing populism. And the US is heading in the same direction (although it's not as far along) because morons like you think that right-wing populism is just fine and dandy.

Re:"rigged Elections"

[EllisDees (268037)]

While it doesn't do this exact type of analysis, Rolling Stone make a pretty convincing case [rollingstone.com] that there was some serious meddling going on in the Ohio election in 2004.

Re:"rigged Elections"

[phayes (202222)]

There were complaints thet the ballots were hard to use statewide but the Dems chose to request recounts only in areas where they expected to gain proportionately more. Gore's request would have carried more weight if he had requested recounts statewide & not just in Dem dominated areas. In the end, the supreme court shut down the recounts because this method of selectively recounting meant that miscounted Dem votes would have counted more than miscounted Rep votes. However, statewide recounts would have taken even longer & would have been very unlikely to have reversed Florida's pro Bush vote.

Re:"rigged Elections"

[Xonstantine (947614)]

You conveniently left out that Gore made the offer on Nov 15, after all previous recounts had failed to get the result desired. Gore wasn't being magnanimous or trying to be fair, he was trying his last gasp. And quite honestly, the state wide recount is irrelevant given the collusion between the Democrats and the media on election night, when the state of Florida was actually called for Gore before the polls closed in Western Florida, causing many people to literally walk away from the election lines. Western Florida, of course, is heavily Republican. You can usually tell what politicians are up to by what they accuse others of doing. For Republicans, it's cheating on their wives or taking drugs. For Democrats, it's committing vote fraud.

Compare 2004 Ohio and 2000 Florida returns

[Derling Whirvish (636322)]

For comparisons' sake I would like to see the same graph of percentage vs turnout in the presidential race for Florida counties in 2000 and Ohio counties in 2004.

Re:Compare 2004 Ohio and 2000 Florida returns

[Duhavid (677874)]

Classified. Sorry. Try back in about 50.

What happened to the great Russian Mathematicians?

[the eric conspiracy (20178)]

A.N. Kolmogorov must be weeping.

Re:What happened to the great Russian Mathematicia

[eli pabst (948845)]

A.N. Kolmogorov must be weeping.

Too much Smirnov [wikipedia.org] apparently.

God, I can't tell you how long I've been waiting to use that :-]

Detailed tests?

[Iwanowitch (993961)]

It certainly seems like the distribution of the red dots is different from the others from a graphical impression.. But can someone remind me on what the correct statistical procedure is to 'determine fraud' here? Nonparametric ANOVA, comparing the groups? I mean, noting that the correlation coefficient is 0.9 doesn't really prove anything, does it...
I've had some statistics but I was never really good at it... I developed a radar for lousy statistics, though. Hard numbers please.

Re:Detailed tests?

[Gorobei (127755)]

There is no statistic to determine fraud, almost by definition. The various statistical tests look for improbable departures from expectations, and the fraudster tries to modify the data in a way that doesn't look improbable.

Given we have few datasets of fraudulent vs non-fraudulent numbers, it is hard to generate hard numbers. Instead, we look at tests the fraudsters didn't consider or understand, and these tests usually show such extreme numbers that any statistician would assume the data was manipulated. For example:

1. Faked biology data (several known examples) - means look good, but higher order stats are way outside a normal distribution. Luckily, you can repeat the experiments, and see the repeats don't show the reported results.

2. Faked accounting data (tons of examples.) Most fakers make really basic mistakes. E.g. around 27%? of financial numbers should begin with 1, faked data usually has the wrong leading number distribution. Again, forensic accountants dig here and usualy hit paydirt.

3. Image manipulation. Again, the manipulator gets the first order stats right, but leaves a mess in terms of higher order stats (local vs global noise.)

Re:Detailed tests?

[brit74 (831798)]

In general one would expect the dots to form vaguely horizontal bands across the graph. In other words, in districts where there was 50% turnout, 50% of the votes would be for Putin's party, and in districts with 90% turnout, approximately the same percentage (50%) of votes would be for Putin's party. That's what you wold expect from fair voting.

On the other hand, if voter turnout was, say 40-60%, and you were stuffing the ballot boxes with an additional 0-30% votes - all of them for Putin's party, you would get the kind of pattern you see in that graph. You could also get this pattern if people were being forced to go and vote for Putin's party.

The most interesting question: WHY?

[Cyberax (705495)]

The most interesting question: why have they done that? I live in Russia and nobody here really doubts that the ruling party ("United Russia" - "Edinaja Rossija") influenced elections.

The real approval rates of other opposition parties (communists excepted) were in single percents, anyway. And the real approval rate of United Russia was high enough - all manipulations possibly resulted in several extra seats in parliament for them. So it's not that Putin seriously risked losing his power.

Re:The most interesting question: WHY?

[Opportunist (166417)]

The tongue-in-cheek reply would be "old habits die hard". But it's something else. Blatant election fraud (and, pardon if I say it directly, I doubt they're so stupid to rig it so badly) serves only one goal: It's a statement. The statement says pretty much "Look. We can manipulate the election any way we want. And? Nobody cared. See? We will win. No matter what. So you better stop trying."

Re:The most interesting question: WHY?

[gaika (975356)]

They need 2/3rds in the parliament to amend constitution.

the mighty graph

[Takichi (1053302)]

And we all know the power of, The Graph! [phdcomics.com]

Those who count the votes...

[xs650 (741277)]

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." Josef Stalin

Explanation

[Hemogoblin (982564)]

Can someone give a better explanation? I'm taking actuarial mathematics and multiple regression courses, and even I have no clue what the guy is talking about.

Re:

[ThreeGigs (239452)]

His argument boils down to this:

There shouldn't be a correlation at all between voter turnout percentage and the percentage that voted for Putin's party.

It's like saying "all of candidate A's supporters voted, only half of candidate B's supporters voted (or were allowed, enabled, not intimidated into not voting, etc.).

In the best traditions of Edward Tufte? Hardly.

[djmurdoch (306849)]

That graph was produced in Excel. I don't think Edward Tufte would like it.

Coverage in the Economist

[paulthomas (685756)]

A sad state of affairs. The Economist had interesting coverage of the event from both the run-up to the "election" and its result.

NOTHING was left to chance in Russia's parliamentary election. As polling stations closed on December 2nd, large lorries with military and riot police surrounded Moscow's main squares. There was no need for them: the city was quiet and nobody was protesting. Nor was there any need for the "tourist" buses ferrying voters from far-flung regions to cast multiple ballots in one polling station after another. "We have been going around polling stations since lunch time," grumbled one man, "and they have not paid us yet."

http://economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10268185 [economist.com]
http://economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10217312 [economist.com]

The Russians should be commended

[edwardpickman (965122)]

It's impressive to have better than a 100% turn out when so few vote in this country. With the help of our current administration and Diebold maybe we can do as well in the next election. Hell this is America we should shoot for 200% voting!

Many Elections are rigged in Favor of Two Parties

[MrSteveSD (801820)]

In the US, UK and other countries with a "first past the post" scheme, the whole system is perpetually rigged in favour of two parties. Small parties find it very difficult because their support is spread thinly. Even if a new party comes along with some amazing ideas, it will likely never get a single seat due to the nature of the electoral system.

If the way of voting was always rigged to favour one particular party, we would be up in arms, but having a system rigged in favour of two parties is not much better.

Edit Wikipedia

[noz (253073)]

I guess the people who have rigged the vote have never heard about Correlation Cofficient.

Oh they have. They just edited Wikipedia first to make it sound absurd.

My firsthand experience

[by Anonymous Coward]

I need to make an anonymous comment here.

I worked at the election committee for the last elections of Russian president. The head of the committee gave me 10 passport (which used as IDs in Russia) numbers to register. I never saw the passwords, I never saw the people. The head filled out the bulletins for those 10 people (all votes for Putin) and went into a voting booth.

I did not see much else, but I am sure it was not a unique case. Also, our district was rather small, in larger districts they probably used more "dead souls".

I am not at all surprised at the fraud in last elections. In fact, I would be surprised if there was not any. As for why - I think (and this is my speculation) each committee must report at least x% (x >> 50) votes for Putin in the last president elections or for Unified Russia in these elections to show a good work. Thus the fraud despite the fact that the elections were decided WAY before the votes were counted.

Putin lifted millions from poverty

[MichaelCrawford (610140)]

I read a front-page Wall Street Journal article a while back that said that Putin is wildly popular with Russian citizens because he's been successful at revitalizing the Russian economy. Before Putin - including after the fall of communism - the vast majority of Russians lived in very grim conditions.

Putin has been successful in changing all that; I would imagine the giving people enough to eat and decent housing can excuse a lot of police-state abuses.

For example, that WSJ article covered a Soviet

Re:Rigged or not, Putin's party would still win.

[jandrese (485)]

As I understand it, Putin has been reasonably effective at crushing the Oligarchies that were running rampant throughout Russia, this has made him a bit unpopular with the current US government because a lot of those Oligarchs were business partners. Unfortunately, his method of stamping them out has been largely to just take over the businesses directly. This has been a boon for the government's bottom line, but in the long run it stifles growth, however the people love it because they're finally seeing some of their country's wealth and frankly I can't blame them. I have no doubt in a few years Putin (or his successor) will finally toss away the pretense of being a Democracy and really start putting the screws to the people, but in the short term they are way better than the previous owners.

Re:Rigged or not, Putin's party would still win.

[danielk1982 (868580)]

As someone else mentioned - Putin's party was going to win majority in a rigged or fair election. But in a fair election they most likely wouldn't get a super majority to push through constitutional changes.

Re:Where did the data come from?

[Escogido (884359)]

Most likely from the GAS "Vybory" (short for State Automatized System "Elections") that is used to calculate preliminary voting results.

I worked for 9 years in the Central Election Commission of Russia, and during my time a lot of technical people had access to the database, and it's not really hard to grab a copy of the DB or a report. I quit that job some years ago, but somehow I doubt a lot of things changed.

This is not a security hole; the data is entered into the system straight from the signed protocol as soon as a lower level election commission does, and protocols are being made public right after they are signed. It also has no official status, at the data is only used for preliminary figures; the official results have to be delivered in paper form.

While we're at it, the site of the Central Election Commission is http://www.cikrf.ru/ [cikrf.ru] and the present election results will be eventually posted at http://www.cikrf.ru/elect_duma/npa/index.jsp [cikrf.ru]. This is in Russian however, so I don't know how useful that would be..

Re:Uh huh.

[doom (14564)]

So, where's the graphs showing the election fraud going on in the U.S.?

You might look at some of Steven F. Freeman's papers [appliedresearch.us], like this one: Polling Bias or Corrupted Count? [appliedresearch.us] (pdf file).

Did Homeland Security censor them, perhaps?

Nope. Just the good old US corporate media. "Nothing to see here, just a bunch of conspiracy nuts on the internet"

Yes, very similar things happended in 2004

[Rob Simpson (533360)]

From Pravda [pravda.ru]:

In Florida, 13 counties reported more votes than voters, these accounting for 39.4% of the vote. In Ohio, at the Gahana 1 Precinct, Bush received 6,253 votes, Kerry 1,916 votes, and the others, 23. This totals 8,192 votes, which is strange, since only 4,346 people voted.

At another Precinct in Gahana, Ohio, 4,258 votes were cast for Bush and only 260 for Kerry, while only 638 people were registered as having voted.

Another source. [verifiedvo...dation.org] These sorts of ridiculous "errors" could be seen when searching the online results at the time.

Yep, that is true

[gritzko (973184)]

I am from Ekaterinburg, Sverdlovskaya oblast, Russia.
Also, all government employees were forced to vote (e.g. teachers).
The Sunday was made a working day in some institutes (4 in our city) to make students vote right there.
Obviously, soldiers, prisoners and mental patients all voted for Putin's party.
I've seen a lot of things of this kind here.