Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 3 – Sergey Shpilkin,
the Moscow physicist who exposed voter fraud in Russia in 2011 (arxiv.org/pdf/1205.0741v2.pdf), says that those calling for a boycott of the March
presidential elections may produce outcomes very different than they intend
unless they target their appeals to different voters than they now appear to be
doing.
On
his Facebook page, Shpilkin says this can be seen if one imagines that calls
for a boycott will reduce the total number of voters by one percent, but its
impact on the percentage Vladimir Putin is likely to get will be less than that
in most all cases (facebook.com/notes/sergey-shpilkin/арифметика-бойкота/1572944922794138/).
“In country R, presidential
elections are ahead,” the physicist says. “Unregistered candidate N who has
spoken against the current president P has called for boycotting the elections.
What can come from this?”
Those responding to such a call are
likely to be supporters of N (Navalny) rather than P (Putin). For each one
percent of the electorate the boycotters are able to attract to their side, the
level of participation will fall by one percent. But that doesn’t mean that
this will have the same impact on Putin’s percentages.
In fact, under most conditions, such
a boycott would mean that Putin would get a larger share of the votes actually
cast. That is not something that those
organizing this election from the Kremlin will be all that unhappy about, Shpilkin
suggests, unless the opposition candidate Navalny could get all of his
supporters to stay home.
For Putin’s percentage to fall, he
continues, “the number of P [that is, Putin] supporters boycotting the election
as a rule must be more than the number of his opponents who are boycotting the voting.” And even then the situation is going to be
very different in different parts of the country.
In cities where the population is
opposed to P and where support for P and participation are both estimated to be
about 40 percent, “a reduction in participation by opponents of P by one
percent will lead to a growth in P’s result by one percent, while the reduction
in the participation of supporters of P by one percent will lead to a reduction
in P’s result by 1.5 percent.
That means among other things,
Shpilkin says, that N must also get those who back the other opposition
candidates to boycott as well.
In agricultural regions where
participation and support for P are estimated now at 50 percent in each case, “the
effects of non-participation of opponents and supporters of P are equal in
size,” and therefore to compensate for the increase in P’s result, one need
only “agitate for a boycott of opponents and supporters on a proportion of one
to one.”
In regions where support for P and
participation are currently projected to be 60 and 60, in order to compensate
for the increased percentage P would receive from a boycott, “it is necessary
that among the supporters of P 1.5 times more boycott the voting than do those opposed
to him.
And in regions where the figures are
70 and 70, figures unlikely to be realized in most places, “in order not to
increase the percentage of P voters as a result of a boycott, one must for each
boycotting opponent of P find two and a half supporters of P to boycott as
well,” Shpilkin continues.
This means, the analyst says, that “a
boycott by only the opponents of P will be ineffective from the point of view
of the results” and that “agitation for a boycott must be directed fully or in
large part at the supporters of P.” Indeed,
Shpilkin says, “it would be better not to call on supports of N to boycott” and
to have any boycott call come not from a candidate but rather from non-party
groups.
Otherwise, a boycott is likely to
produce results very much the opposite of what those calling for one now hope.
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