Kremlin has ‘Opened the Sluice Gates’ for Falsification of Future Votes, ‘Golos’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 1 – Grigory Melkonyants, vice president of the ‘Golos for Honest Elections’ says the Russian authorities have “opened the last sluice gates” so as to allow the Central Electoral Commission to falsify any voting in the future so that the people on top will get the outcome they want regardless of how the Russian people actually vote.

            As the Russian media have already reported, the CEC has banned public and party observers from polling stations, eliminated declarations that could allow for the identification of falsified votes, opened the way for preliminary and home voting that is far more difficult to monitor, and reduced to a minimum public access to the counting of votes.

            But now, on top of all this, Melkonyants says, the CEC “has prepared revolutionary changes in the already anti-democratic arrangements for the holding of all-Russian voting” in advance of the referendum on the amendments to the amendments to the constitution and regional and local voting in September (newizv.ru/news/politics/01-06-2020/golos-tsik-otkryl-poslednite-shlyuzy-dlya-falsifikatsii-vyborov-i-golosovaniy).

            Its new and even more anti-democratic procedures include the following:

·         Giving ballots to people without requiring them to present passport data for identification. 

·         Allowing voting to take place on the street for six days before the election is scheduled.

·         Allowing people to vote from home without giving a justification.

·         And ensuring that everyone supervising the elections is under the complete control of the CEC.

It would seem that the voting is to be held as if a war was going on, the Golos leader says; but the situation is even worse than that.  Voting booths won’t have latches on them, people can avoid taking steps allowing them to be identified, booths will be disinfected after each vote allowing those who do so to stuff the ballot boxes as will other disinfection procedures.

There are a variety of other disinfection procedures that allow for falsification, Melkonyants says. But he continues, “knowing our Russian reality, I do not believe that all these and many other defensive measures as indicated in the recommendations will be fulfilled. And that means we must await a new wave of the epidemic” or massive falsifications.

            Tragically, Russia is likely to have both, with the retreat from democracy the authorities are performing in the name of protecting the Russian people harming them in two fundamental ways.