"Recording turnout was what unnerved them the most": turnout in the elections could be 1,5-2 times lower than the Central Election Commission claims.
🔸 The Central Election Commission stated that turnout in the State Duma elections reached 59,68% (based on 99,89% of the voter registration forms processed). However, those working on the elections question this figure, as do experts.
🔸 According to a subscriber NotMoscow, who is a member of the parliamentary party and was responsible for deploying observers at polling stations in his city, said that the thing that most irritated the PEC members was the voter turnout recording.
"On Friday, they somehow tolerated our observers' presence, but on Saturday, they pressured the party leadership, and we had to recall almost all of them," a subscriber said. "When they left the polling stations, the actual turnout there was around 20%. Meanwhile, other polling stations we hadn't closed were reporting 50% turnout by that point."
The subscriber also clarified that it was not only his party that removed the observers, but also another one, also a parliamentary party.
Some observers who refused to leave the polling stations had to be persuaded personally.
— Otherwise, we were threatened that they would have problems with the police and would be sent to the SVO, he explained.
🔸 According to the calculations of an electoral expert Boris Ovchinnikov, the real turnout in these elections could make up Less than 40%. And the actual share of votes for United Russia, based on the paper ballot, remains at 35% (instead of the stated 57,8%). Ovchinnikov also emphasized that this time, United Russia's result was inflated not by subtracting votes from other parties, but by the falsification of the turnout.
🔸 In 35% evaluates real support for United Russia and an electoral expert Anatoly Karlin.
🔸 Novaya Gazeta Evropa appreciated United Russia's actual result is 34%: in its analysis, the publication used a method developed by a physicist Sergei Shpilkin (It's based on the idea that massively increasing votes for one candidate simultaneously increases both their result and turnout. As a result, on the graph, normal polling stations, where there was no fraud, form a relatively smooth, "honest core," while abnormal ones (where vote stuffing was suspected) form a "comet tail," stretched toward higher turnout and a higher result for the desired candidate.)
🔸 Analysis of the Agency publication showsthat almost 15 million abnormal votes were cast for United Russia.
🔸 The case of A Just Russia also provides indirect evidence of vote fraud: its votes began to rise abnormally sharply after it became clear that the party was receiving less than the five percent required to enter the State Duma. At polling stations without signs of fraud, A Just Russia alone garnered around 7% of the vote, but likely due to massive ballot stuffing for United Russia, its share of the overall result fell below the threshold.
🔸 At the same time, the project "People of Baikal" опубликовал Monologues from several Russian women working at polling stations these days. And some even saw cause for optimism. For example, one of the publication's interviewees was pleasantly surprised after a well-known United Russia member slightly outscored an unknown communist from a remote district in the vote count at her polling station.
"For our region, with its slew of military units and its largely aging population, these results are simply astonishing," she said. "Yes, United Russia won everything, but by such a small margin. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. For me, it was a true protest vote. Maybe it's still in its infancy, but that's definitely it."
She also added that at 12 noon on Sunday, when the "Noon Against Putin" rally was scheduled, a line of young people and adults formed at the polling station in their small town.
"Grandchildren and children brought their parents, clearly having talked to them beforehand. In short, this time my sense of decay somehow receded."
the interlocutor of “People of Baikal” summed up.