Graph Shows Fraud in Russian Elections 406
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."
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:1, Informative)
In the first full study of Florida's ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled "undervotes" -- ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through -- to be counted.
Neither the Miami Herald nor USA Today could remotely be considered "Bush friendly". But you still believe and repeat the lie. Shameful!
Re:Rigged or not, Putin's party would still win. (Score:5, Informative)
Coverage in the Economist (Score:3, Informative)
http://economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10217312 [economist.com]
Re:Uh huh. (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Nope. Just the good old US corporate media. "Nothing to see here, just a bunch of conspiracy nuts on the internet"
Re:Explanation (Score:3, Informative)
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.).
Re:The most interesting question: WHY? (Score:4, Informative)
So he did (Score:3, Informative)
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll wash my hands after partaking in one of Slashdot's redmeat xenophobe stories. Call me when you all have something positive to post about Russians or Chinese for a change: Until then, the usual Anglosphere "coverage" of the other major powers is best taken with a large grain of salt. [atimes.com]
Re:The Russians should be commended (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Detailed tests? (Score:5, Informative)
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.)
My firsthand experience (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Detailed tests? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The nice thing (Score:3, Informative)
The stats were all done using swivel (probably after you commented admittedly), not livejoural, LJ is just the site he posted them.
Re:"rigged Elections" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Rigged or not, Putin's party would still win. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Many Elections are rigged in Favor of Two Parti (Score:2, Informative)
Deadly Power Games in the Kremlin (Score:5, Informative)
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?
Yep, that is true (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:"rigged Elections" (Score:1, Informative)
Read right under that:
"After the election, USA Today, The Miami Herald, and Knight Ridder commissioned accounting firm BDO Seidman to count undervotes, that is, ballots which did not register any vote when counted by machine. BDO Seidman's results, reported in USA Today , show that under the strictest standard, where only a cleanly punched ballot with a fully removed chad was counted, Gore won by three votes.[15] Under all other standards, Bush won, with Bush's margin increasing as looser standards were used. The standards considered by BDO Seidman were:
* Lenient standard. Any alteration in a chad, ranging from a dimple to a full punch, counts as a vote. By this standard, Bush won by 1,665 votes.
* Palm Beach standard. A dimple is counted as a vote if other races on the same ballot show dimples as well. By this standard, Bush won by 884 votes.
* Two-corner standard. A chad with two or more corners removed is counted as a vote. This is the most common standard in use. By this standard, Bush won by 363 votes.
* Strict standard. Only a fully removed chad counts as a vote. By this standard, Gore won by 3 votes.
"
"A larger consortium of news organizations, including the USA Today, the Miami Herald, Knight Ridder, the Tampa Tribune, and five other newspapers next conducted a full recount of all ballots, including both undervotes and overvotes. According to their results, under stricter standards for vote counting, Bush won, and under looser standards, Gore won. [16] However, a Gore win was impossible without a recount of overvotes, which he did not request."
Re:Rigged or not, Putin's party would still win. (Score:3, Informative)
Hardly. Reports of Airbus's decline have been greatly exaggerated (as were the reports about Boeing's decline a few years before that). Airbus shot itself in the foot with the electrical problems on the A380 en is suffering from the low dollar but both problem are being addressed. Considering that some 35 years after being founded it sells a little more that half the worlds large jet aircraft, I'd say calling it a success is valid.
(Though I'm not sure it ever qualified as a state-controlled enterprise)
*sigh* the neo-liberal propaganda again. Europe is doing fine. Unemployment in the EU down to a reasonable seven percent [finfacts.com] (including around 3% for states like Denmark and the Netherlands with very large welfare systems). Growth is healthy [forbes.com] and comparable with the US.
I quite fail to see how a 35 hour workweek or 6 weeks of paid leave (not to mention universal healthcare and good consumer protection) are bad things.
Concerning the "sense of snivelling self righteousness" I'd offer a) a request for some examples b) the possibility that it might me justified and c) a mirror/look at the US government.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Interestingly enough, with all the fraud, they've still failed - only 59% of those eligible to vote did so, and of those, 64.3% voted for Putin's United Russia. That makes 38% of all voters, much less impressive. Of course, now they're bending the figures anyway - Putin himself had said recently that he takes the result of elections to be 90% support for himself, since other elected parties have on one or another occasion also supported his policies.
Re:Compare 2004 Ohio and 2000 Florida returns (Score:3, Informative)
The state of Florida didn't design or count the ballots at issue in the 2000 election, they just certified the results. The counties at issue were not Bush-friendly. Trying to blame Bush or Republicans for somehow creating the mess by magically controlling them is ridiculous.
The complaints in Ohio in 2004 revolved around vote counting/re-counting as well as polling place availability and voting machine availability. Both were supposedly issues in the voting locations where Kerry had the most support, in densely populated areas.
Now, knowing that densely populated areas were heavily Democrat controlled (hence why they also went for Kerry) and that in Ohio the County elections board deals with all counting issues, do you think it's reasonable that in a heavily Democrat controlled county the Democrat elections board was miscounting things in order to favor Bush?
So let's take machine availability and malfunctions. Cuyahoga County was at the center of the controversy. Like the other counties in Ohio, they buy their own voting machines (although they wanted the State to pay them back for replacing the Diebold machines that caused them problems [crainscleveland.com]). Want to review the 54 pages of Democrat elected officials in the county [cuydem.com]? Do you really think they were conspiring to disenfranchise their own Democrat voters in order to throw the election to Bush? Or is it more likely that they're just more incompetent Democrats who weren't able to organize the voting process in their County?
I mentioned precincts as well as counties because in Ohio, the word was that certain heavily Democrat precincts had problems with their voting machines. Since they're heavily Democrat precincts, do you really think that the Precinct people there were Republicans in control of the Precinct polling location? You can do the research to prove that it wasn't, but instead certain people choose to believe something that doesn't even make sense on the face of it, that somehow a cabal of Republicans managed to physically control precincts in heavily Democrat areas in order to suppress their votes.
They're such stupid accusations it's hard to see why anyone with even the most basic knowledge of the elections process could take them seriously. As for the original point, he wanted to run statistical tests on the 2000 and 2004 elections for those "problem" areas in order to analyze whether similar problems to the recent Russian election occurred. My original point was that the actual voting process in those "problem" areas was controlled by Democrats, so what incentive did they have to somehow arrange to alter vote totals to favor Bush?
Putin controlled the election machinery in Russia. Bush, nor the Republicans, controlled the election machinery in the vast majority of areas that were claimed to be problems in the 2000 and 2004 elections. There's no real comparison possible.