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?

[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?

You don't need brains to be a dictator

[crath]

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:Why?

[Divebus]

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

Re:Whoopsie!

[Bob54321]

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

The most interesting question: WHY?

[Cyberax]

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:Why?

[ShieldW0lf]

Q: Why does greater than 100% turnout automatically mean election fraud, and not an error in the distribution of population between regions of the country?

A: Because that doesn't support my preconceptions. Fuck off, Troll!

Re:"rigged Elections"

[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. You should try and live, work and stand against the government in countries where this is becoming the rule (such as Russia, Brazil, Venezuela) so you'll learn how bloody different this is from American democracy.

The nice thing

[evanbd]

About reputable news sources is that they have, well, a reputation for doing at least a decent job of statistics. Livejournal... doesn't.

On the other hand, the nice thing about statistics is that without much work you can show what numbers you started with, what games you played with them, and what numbers you ended up with. And you can fairly easy say why you think those games were legitimate, and others can fairly easily say why they think they are or aren't, or can otherwise review your methodology.

So, if we're going to link to Livejournal as our source of statistics, can we at least link to pages that showed their work, just like they were taught in math class?

I know enough statistics to at least form a rough opinion on whether what they're stating is meaningful -- which is completely useless given the total lack of any data or discussion of methods. Yes, that stuff from math class did actually have a point.

Those who count the votes...

[xs650]

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

Re:"rigged Elections"

[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:Where did the data come from?

[Escogido]

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..

so did Hitler

[m2943]

Why do you think Hitler became popular in Germany? The country was in economic shambles after WW I, and the squabbling nascent democracy just didn't manage to put things together again. Hitler was a law-and-order, family values candidate who managed to put people to work and had simple, straightforward answers; this was just a few years before he then turned into a genocidal maniac who killed millions of people.

And make no mistake about it: every nation is always at risk for those kinds of people.

Re:The most interesting question: WHY?

[burni]

From my point of view, he is clearly up to something, some coup we cannot clearly think about.

He wanted to be 100% sure that Putins party and his favoured
others (Schirinowski) parties get

1.) a clear +66 percent in the Duma (russian parliament)
2.) Putin can show this result like a trophy that the russians fully trust him

( they entiteled him to be a leader )

if you recall his announcement for his past presidential time, he don't want to become
a Prime Minister, but he wants to stay as an influential adviser for the future devellopment
of russia, would he install a third position additional to the president or the prime minister,
this will be interisting how this turns out.

Well a pupet master who pulls the strings ?

Re:"rigged Elections"

[Opportunist]

There's no need to rig the election in the US in an illegal way. The legal options, from gerrymandering to the election system itself, are plenty if you want to tweak the system in your favor.

Provided you already are in power.

Re:The most interesting question: WHY?

[Opportunist]

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:So the worst case scenario for Russia is that .

[jo7hs2]

If you want to impeach Bush for having a 30% approval rating, you'll need to impeach the democratic legislature as well. And cite a serious poll from a legitimate source indicating that the majority of Americans think that Bush has committed impeachable offenses.

Putin does not need to rig any election.

[dude153]

Putin is so popular in Russia (really) that he doesn't need to rig anyting. He would have won anyways. In Russia, most of the population indeed respects Putin and this is a result of all his years as a president. You may say he gradually eliminated opposition and I will agree. But he and whoever helps him are truly amazing in their ability to build a personal cult. I don't live in Russia anymore but I have a lot of friends there - and I saw their opinion gradually warming up to Putin. Part of this is manipulation, part real result of stabilization he oversaw. At this moment, I am not sure he's a bad choice - two next popular parties are communists and Dgirinovsky - I would vote for Putin given that choice.

Re:Explanation

[tajmahall]

Rigging elections means fake votes are cast in your favor. Assuming that overall turnout had no correlation with political preference to begin with, regions with higher turnout would correspond to places where more fake votes were cast. If most fake votes were for Yedinaya Russia, you would see correlation between turnout and their vote share, which you do. Of course, more data is necessary to make the case. One ought to show that voter turnout shouldn't correspond to political preference.

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

[Original Replica]

it could describe both our current and former leader.

I'll take "fucks interns" over "fucks the constitution" any day.

Re:Putin lifted millions from poverty

[Sparohok]

Putin didn't lift anyone from poverty, commodities prices did. If oil were still $12/bbl, as it was when Putin took office, instead of $88 as it is today, he would be a footnote to history. Your gas guzzling SUV gave Vladimir Putin the opportunity to do shit like this.

It is not a coincidence that countries rich in natural resources tend to have the least democratic governments.

Re:So the worst case scenario for Russia is that .

[Toonol]

... their elections are about as fair and honest as the last two US presidential elections.

This sort of statement really undermines your credibility. It's untrue; not just false, but so false as to make it clear that anyone believing it cannot be trusted with any statement.

Bush clearly won in 2004; nobody credible doubts that. In 2000, the unfortunate fact is that the election was within the tolerance of error, and when that happens the 'true' winner is, and always will be, unknowable. In that case, we rely on laws put in place to handle that contingency. Those laws weren't terribly well thought-out, and weren't completely obeyed.

Your second paragraph, about popularity, is irrelevant. I think Bush is doing a lousy job, but would still vote for him over Gore in an instant.

Re:Why?

[Escogido]

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?

[cptdondo]

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:Debate over

[m2943]

When discussing the history of dictators and Russia, comparisons with Hitler are entirely appropriate.

Maybe we should formulate a corollary to Godwin's law that in any history discussing that appropriately talks about Hitler and WWII, some adolescent nitwit will try to quell the debate by invoking Godwin's law.

Re:Why?

[moro_666]

So according to you, the war is over and the last gunshot deaths from Chechnya were just accidents where the locals ran into the bullets that stood in midair while the russian soldiers were not shooting at anyone ?

  Oh come on. This as good as "the iraq war is over" ... The funny thing is that some americans think the same thing about iraq. But if the war is over, why are people still shooting each-other and dying, in both crisis places ? :)

Re:Whoopsie!

[AndyElf]

Indeed. While I won't say that elections were totally fair, I really don't think that rigging would be happening on the scale implied by TFA. Correlation, indeed, does not mean a causation -- this is the very first thing they tell you in any statistics class. As it happens, for this particular case there's a very good explanation: you get higher turnout *exactly* in the places where it is likelier that Putin's part wins. Like remote villages and smaller towns that care next to nothing about SPS, Yabloko. Putin's United Russia has become new party of choice for many in voters that would have in the past voted for Communists. Now, this is not to say that Yabloko and SPS had an even match over in those places, but one also has to remember that elections are not won out there. Moscow, St. Petersburg + 10-12 cities that have a million+ population make up over 40% of total population of Russia. You have to win there, to really win. And these are the places that are on the left side of the graph -- where turnout is lower (45-65%) and quite a few parties have gone over 10%.

What the LJ article also fails to dwell on, is that you can compare percentages to percentages -- they make no sense taken out of context. 10% of 1 million is a lot more than 100% of 1 thousand, yet on the graph they are made to mean the same. Y axis should have been "% of total votes" not "% of votes for a territory".

As it stands, this "graph" only confirms that there are lies, damn lies and statistics -- you can make numbers tell *any* story you like.

Re:Deadly Power Games in the Kremlin

[Anonymous Coward]

"What exactly are our Russian "experts" in Washington doing?"

Learning to speak Farsi, I suppose.

Re:"rigged Elections"

[Xonstantine]

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.

Re:Why?

[Captain Nitpick]

One of the moderations - yours or grandparent's - needs fixing. What exactly is the truth here?

That the margin of error was greater than the margin of victory.

Re:"rigged Elections"

[Alsee]

A pretty convincing case, yeah right. Flagrant partisan bias.
It only makes "a pretty convincing case" if you're a member of the reality based community.

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