Independent observers within Russia have revealed a “massive falsification” of the results of the vote, which took place in Russia on March 18, the wschodnik.pl website has reported.
It identified the observers as activists of civic movements such as Golos and St. Petersburg Observer.
A study of data in regions with the highest turnout yielded “shocking results,” the Polish website reported, citing Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta.
“In most regions, the actual turnout was just half, a third or even a fifth of the official figure,” wschodnik.pl quoted Novaya Gazeta as reporting.
Russian independent observers were provided with footage from cameras installed in 8,000 polling stations across Russia. They made a random selection of 50 samples of footage from polling stations in five regions in Russia with the highest turnout: Kabardino-Balkaria (91.8 percent turnout), Chechnya (91.54 percent), Dagestan (87.48 percent), Karachay-Cherkessia (87.41 percent) and Tatarstan (77.42 percent), according to wschodnik.pl.
Volunteers counted the number of people who actually cast their votes into the ballot boxes on election day, and then compared this data with the official figures given by Russia’s Central Election Commission, wschodnik.pl reported.
It turned out that the actual turnout was half, a third and even a fifth that officially reported, according to the Polish website.
The overall discrepancy between the results of the visual count made by independent observers and the official polling station data was 30,000 votes, wschodnik.pl said.
According to official figures from the Central Election Commission, Putin won almost 77 percent of the vote in the presidential election in Russia. Turnout was put at 66.5 percent.
The Polish website quoted the head of the Russian Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, as saying that the March 18 elections were "the most transparent and fair" in the country's modern history.
But independent observers reported widespread election irregularities, such as stuffing ballot boxes with more votes than voters, forcing officials and soldiers to vote, and allowing people to vote in more than one polling station, wschodnik.pl said.
(gs/pk)
Source: wschodnik.pl