18 September: election protest in Vladivostok. Viktor Ankov / RIA Novosti. All rights reserved.This decision by Russia’s Central Election Commission is unprecedented. Falsifications and ballot-stuffing have long been common place at Russian elections, but there’s never been a case of election results being cancelled. This is understandable: elections are manipulated in the interests of Russia’s “party of power”. The remaining participants in the elections are far from angels and are also happy to engage in ballot-stuffing in their favour, but to expel election observers from polling stations with the help of the firefighters and engage in trickery at the level of election commissions, you need to have access to the heights of the Russian authorities.
This is the reality of the gubernatorial elections in Primorye, in Russia’s Far East. But why did the Russian authorities opt for such radical moves, and what is really happening?
The main point is that Andrey Ishchenko, the Communist Party’s candidate for governor, has had his election victory stolen — twice. Initially, during the vote, and then in the ensuing administrative process, in which the election results were cancelled, and all votes, not only false ones, but honest ones, were annulled.
