The Elections. Not gonna get them
Chasing the carousel buses, 92 observers from Prokhorov removed, and Sakhalin is already counting
Previously: The Patriarch and Ramzan Kadyrov vote; Putin is treated with bare breasts, while at polling stations the last remains of conscience are lost.
Let us begin with our regular and fashionable column “The famous who vote and protest”. Boris Nemtsov, a Russian politician, took a photo of his ballot.
The handwriting says: “Russia needs honest elections, not these”.
We also keep reporting about the young “guests of our city” who are now gathering on the Bolotnaya square. Here is how they explain their all-too-perceptible presence on the Bolotnaya.
The only innovation of the hour is the assault on the observers. Gaudeamus, a St Petersburg student newspaper, reports:
“According to Alexei Vorontsov, a member of staff of one of the candidates, the observer Nikita Sorokin has been beaten up by the police at the polling station in Inzhekon (Saint-Petersburg State University of Engineering and Economics) and taken to the police station No. 28.”
In other respects, everything is going according to the same routine. The observers are being turned out of the election stations, the carousels are rotating. Most of the offences have been committed against Prokhorov's observers. According to ITAR-TASS:
“Overall, 92 observers from Presidential Candidate Mikhail Prokhorov have been removed from polling stations across the country”. This was reported to ITAR-TASS from Prokhorov's headquarters.
Yesterday Prokhorov personally visited the Russian CEC to inform them of the violations with registering the observers in St Petersburg. According to Prokhorov's staff, there have been cases when unidentified persons gave false notifications of appointing the members of electoral committees with a deliberative vote using the facsimile of Prokhorov's confidents.
Prokhorov’s HQ reports that today both Prokhorov’s and Sergei Mironov (‘Just Russia’) observers were turned down.
Carousels were suspected at almost every polling station, so Alexei Navalny’s RosVybory warns: “ATTENTION: possible carousel members might have orange or bright green marks on their passports.”
No one has explained yet how to fight them. But everyone seems to be chasing them.
Here’s a video from a polling station on Marshal Zhukov street.
Irina Kaliteevskaya, mobile team:
“We moved along the 3rd transport ring and saw a regular bus without a route number. There are no buses on the 3rd TR, so we started following it. It was not a bus, actually, it was a whole convoy: two regular buses, one Mercedes bus and three flanking SUVs. They stopped at Kavkazsky boulevard. One of the buses (license BX341 77) left almost at once. The other two stayed for a long time. Then people started coming out in small groups, mostly men in dark clothes, but also some girls. They went to the school building, of course. In the school there are polling stations Nos. 1944 through 1946. At one of them there was a line of people with absentee certificates; they were those people from the buses, at least most of them. They did not cover their faces, but they did not smile at us either. We recorded them standing in the line, putting their ballots into boxes. The observers said that everyone was informed some people were coming, and it was not the first such group. Then the journalist Yulia Latynina came, and we continued following the buses. By that time, the SUVs had left. Then the bus with the license BX34977 left, too; we tried to chase it but lost it. Mercedes A525AK97 remained there. But at that moment we got a call and were rerouted – there was a carousel at another station, the observer couldn’t cope.”
Sergei Kuznetsov, observer:
“The most showy way for Putin to win would have been playing fair in Moscow and St Pete, and win elsewhere, where there are fewer observers. Maria Maiofis is also wondering why was it necessary to cheat so blatantly in Moscow.
The answer is simple: the system is structured that way, it’s not about efficiency, it’s about using up the money. How many people fed off the December 4 fraud in Moscow? Do you think they would voluntarily refuse to repeat it on March 4? That’s why the buses, and carousel, and everything.
Not because it’s easier for Putin to win that way; it’s because it’s easier to write off the dough that way.”
Tatyana Kharina, observer, station No. 1778:
Varvara Babitskaya, observer / journalist (Openspace.ru):
“They were saying there was an order to be gentle with the observers this time! Nothing of the sort: at PS 902 an observer was illegally detained, his documents (including passport and observer document) were confiscated, as well as a video camera. The recording of cars with flashers approaching the polling station was erased. The policemen holding the observer drive a car A906MP”. Dear journalists with cars who are thinking how to help: you can watch the Citizen Observer feed and just go to the nearest problem station: even if there would be a mobile team already, too many is better than too few.”
Coming next: a video from the famous PS No. 2888, the voter of the hour, what happens at Navalny’s alternative CEC, who else was ousted, whom else to chase.
If you’re too bored to wait for the next issue, watch North Ossetia vote:
