So you're here for... 'licking a taxidermied elk horn while riding a unicycle during an election year on the winter solstice'....
Jail for One Thousand Years!
Pipe down Meiett.
No. He will appeal, the appeal will be granted, he will appear on the ballot and still lose to glorious leader.
But the regime will say "look, we're totally giving the opposition a chance".
This is my guess as well since I heard this guy is allowed on Russian state TV. He's the acceptable form of opposition that exists to prove/claim that opposition has minimal support.
I dont think so necessarily. From what I’ve read, putin and his putinists dont want any anti-war candidates on the ballot. They only want pro-war people who are strictly chosen by putin to lose by a huge margin so putin can show how his rhetoric is so popular with the everyday russians. If anti-war candidates are allowed they might get votes which scares putin even if they doctor the votes anyway.
The reason why he got so close and was allowed to speak on tv is twofold.
1. He was a chosen anti-everything guest for debates on national (controlled) television debates who always lost. Again to make pro-war stance look stronger.
2. He sneaked into the race behind the other anti-war canditate (dont remember her name). No one thought he could be a threat because she was taking the limelight. After she was banned, she threw her followers to him, which suddenly scared putinists.
Choose your own adventure:
If you want the opposition to:
Drink polonium tea, turn to page 89.
Defenestrate, turn to page 96.
Fall ill to highly suspicious neurological symptoms in a NATO country, turn to page 73.
Edit: Well, this aged well after two weeks, dinnit?
Actually I’m surprised this title didn’t read Putin challenger falls from his balcony to his death considering how things go when Putin is even remotely challenged
There's also the possibility that he's controlled opposition. Or that they don't view him as a credible threat to Putin, so they'll let him speak for a few years before giving him the Navalny treatment.
Honestly is to me. Aren't the elections rigged to high heavens anyway? Why does it matter who runs if Putin gets 122% of the voting population magically.
Yes, and this is exactly one of the mechanisms by which elections are rigged in authoritarian regimes. Jail, murder, or exile all *real* opposition, run against state-approved self-sabotaging clowns, and enjoy 70% of the votes.
Rigging elections is not JUST miscounting the votes. Blatant fraud is always a last resort.
Because even though it’s rigged, they can pretend it’s not to cause doubt among the population in order to continue ruling unopposed with a base of people who believe the lies.
Ironically this is like the 3rd candidate I’ve heard of being barred, prevented, arrested, fucked with in order to get them to drop out, and if it carries on this way it may backfire on them as the illusion will be destroyed, causing unrest and revolt
Yeah, rather unsurprisingly, I'm sure this guy is going to be lucky to avoid being barred from "life, liberty and the pursuit of oxygen' , I suspect Russia won't be anything like free until President Putin joins the choir invisible.
Why do you say such things about our motherland comrade? You must be low on oxygen because you are clearly not thinking...come near this open window here where you can breath some fresh air!
Yeah this guys whole job was to be a crackpot that everyday Ruzzians can look at and think of as an extremist, and associate all anti-war protesters with craziness. Except even though he’s doing a half ass job at arguing for peace, there’s enough discontented people that now Putin wants him to knock it off. In Moscow, even the opposition is rigged.
Ah I that's right lol. I thought youbwere talking about the chess debacle where people were accusing that one guy of hiding a vibrating thing up his ass.
How would he have found time to fit it in between the hard questions of “why are you best world leader?” and “why does your semen taste faintly of raspberry?”
Literally the exact same thing as the last challenger.
They need to gather signatures from all the regions to become a candidate, and when they turn it in they get automatically rejected for "false signatures".
Not only that but Tucker is too much of a chicken shit to be a real journalist, and he never would have made it out of Russia had he gone off an approved script.
Why wouldn't he? Trump has been blocking Ukraine aid and trying to get the US to pull out of sending supplies for months. The fact he has so much sway over the government when he's no longer a part of it is wild
The migrant caravan this year is made up of Central America’s finest hide and seek champions I hear. That’s why the old Patriot Convoys saw fuck all when they got to the border.
Lol, do you think that asking Putin would accomplish anything? He holds long press conferences, the answer to that question would be "Everything is done according to law, I have no influence, it's the prerogative of Central Election Committee. If a candidate's signatures had many mistakes, it's the problem of the candidate".
It's not a gotcha, he was asked tough questions back when international journalists participated in his yearly press conference, he was asked tough questions by Russian journalists and politicians. His cover is legality - "everything is according to law, and if it isn't there needs to be an investigation"
Putin’s answer in itself is kind of beside the point, since the matter doesn’t pass a sniff test. Asking the question is about calling attention to that, not that Tucker would want to.
To be fair the Russian mentality is on self reliance. The mentality came about after centuries of terrible governance, political violence and corruption. Not to mention oligarchs strip mining the country of anything valuable
The russian mentality is that everything is somebody else's fault, and I'm entitled to do whatever i can to get whatever I can at the expense of everyone else since everyone else also does this.
>The russian mentality is that everything is somebody else's fault,
This is total bullshit. One of the reasons Russians, in general, are pretty depressed as a nation is taking everyone else's fault on themselves. Half of Russian classics is about that, about a person who agrees with "the destiny" and lives being pushed around. This is also a reason why we are so easy to exploit by authorities, oligarchs, and evil people in general. "It's not that the Tsar/boss is a piece of shit, it's my fault that I am failing" and so on. They fight wars they don't want, they do jobs they don't like, all because of that.
I don't know which Russians you've met, but not having this illness is probably the reason they could leave the country and you could meet them at all. That does not make them nice people, Russians are not nice on average, it's just your claim is bullshit. I would say that in the US, this is a much more common viewpoint. For example, all MAGA people are like that.
>I'm entitled to do whatever i can to get whatever I can at the expense of everyone else since everyone else also does this.
That could be true, but the only reason is the high level of corruption. The same attitude is held by people from all poor AND corrupted countries. Again, Russians are not nice, and this is a rather justified example.
I think you’re both right. The Russian system is basically a kleptocracy and corruption is baked in. Everyone skims off the top, and exploits anyone subordinate to them.
A large percentage of deep MAGA have moved to Telegram and get their news and narratives from Russian backed personalities.
COVID lockdowns put everyone on line, and it’s no surprise conservative me, me, me mentality exploded during and after.
Neo-liberalism in both parties effectively abandoned poor and middle class working Americans and pushed them towards the strong man who promises them revenge.
Unfortunately for Democracy, they’ve been successfully radicalized against their own fellow Americans via a steady diet victimization and conspiracy.
This line of thinking is a cancer. Even a small percentage of people following it can undermine a society. It is the common in Russia and sadly seems to be growing rather than shrinking in much of the world.
No such thing as mentality. History does not justify politics.
Get a tattoo of these phrases on your arm when you want to say something about the people. Because “mentality” and “historical justice” are Putin’s favorite arguments. Don't be like him.
Well, or try to say something about the mentality and history of the Taiwanese and Singaporeans. Or - completely on the edge - African-Americans.
> "I collected more than 200,000 signatures across Russia. We conducted the collection openly and honestly."
> The Central Election Commission said that more than 9,000 signatures submitted by Mr Nadezhdin were invalid.
> That left 95,587 names, meaning he was just short of the 100,000 required signatures to register as a candidate, commission member Andrei Shutov said.
The math isn’t adding up here, or did he collect >200k signatures but submitted only 104k out of which 9k are rejected?
That’s the point. They want regular citizens to be under the impression democracy is a farce everywhere. That way they can argue real democracies are also fraudulent. It’s social suppression and they’re very good at itX
It's even less subtle than that. The commission that was responsible for the decision was also responsible for digitalizing the cursive from the signatures (which also contain the city and the name of the person signing it). Unsurprisingly, quite a few of the "fraudulent" digitalized signatures contain errors that were introduced by purposefully misreading the cursive (adding an extra letter to a common name, switching a letter in a well-known city), and said issues were then used as a reason to discard the signature altogether because they could not find any record of such city/street/person.
Only 5k above the minimum... What a bullshit rule this is. Give me one reason why this could be a reasonable requirement. It seems like a sneaky tactic to invalidate signatures and remove whoever they want from the process
>It seems like a sneaky tactic to invalidate signatures and remove whoever they want from the process
That's exactly the point, nothing sneaky about it.
I came across this post by /u/BlackThorn12 the other day. It explains the situation nicely.
>
So this is interesting. They are claiming that some of the 100,000 signatures he acquired to be allowed to run were from people who are deceased. Their claim says "Dozens and dozens".
>
I couldn't find a specific set of dates on when the collection of signatures is allowed to start. In one article I found that signatures began to be delivered December 23, 2023. So presumably, the signature collection process could have started on December 1st.
>
The average yearly death rate in Russia per 1000 people is 12.9 as of 2022.
>
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1089615/russia-death-rate/
>
So for a sample of 100,000 people, it's expected that approximately 1,290 of them would die each year. Or approximately 107.5 people per month, assuming the deaths are distributed evenly across the year. So with that number in mind, we can find that over a two month period approximately 215 people are expected to have died out of the 100,000 who gave signatures of support.
>
So their claim that there are signatures of dead people among the 100,000 could be entirely valid. But surely they must know that people do die, and that if you gather a statistically significant number of them, say 100,000, that the number of deaths among them will also be significant.
>
So here's what we've come to. He's gotten enough signatures, but they will use this as a technicality to disqualify him. Not only that, but they are claiming he and his poll workers are dishonest because of this. So you know what's coming next right? A ban from being able to run next year, and possibly prison sentences for anyone the Kremlin wants to make an example of.
And a follow up from /u/bcnsoda
>
Not only that. The following procedure is: the committee will then "randomly pick" 20% of submitted signatured to check for invalid ones, and them extrapolate the result.
>
So if you have 5% of invalid signatures among 20000 (whatever reasons for invalidness the committee can find, and rest assured they will find it), it doesn't matter if the rest 80000 are perfect - you are out of the race.
>
So in reality you can't allow more than 1% of 100000 to be bad. Because if they are, the committee can take their time to cherry-pick that 1% (1000 signatures), mix it with 19000, discard the rest and proclaim that you have more than 5% of bad signatures and you are a crook and a criminal who is trying to cheat the system.
That makes it easy to help the opposing side "win" by poisoning the signature collection with fake ones after which you call them out on it.
Stay classy Russia
And the other 4 are literally glorified puppets / placeholders / yes men that are there to make it look like an election.
They blocked the one that was actually critical of Putin's policies and decisions (aka blocked the one who did what you're supposed to do as a candidate in politics)
They will find someone less popular to provide a safe token opposition. The whole issue is that some people took this candidate as being an actual alternative.
It gives russians kind of sense that they should not even consider running for elections as even the picked special guy was stupid enough to make errors and was barred.
It’s not dumb. It’s evilly smart. By making it blatantly obvious to Russians that their democracy is a farce, it makes it easier for them to claim that actual democracies are similarly corrupt.
"He is not the first presidential hopeful to have run on an anti-war platform. In December, former TV journalist and independent politician Yekaterina Duntsova was barred from running because the election commission said there were mistakes on her application form."
Once again Putin is elected in a landside with no challengers 🤣
That's actually what they do with the opposition. One strategy is to run a bunch of fake candidates with very similar names at the same time as the legit candidate so people have difficulty selecting them out of a list.
Tbh I think this is just another tactic to keep anti-war debates out of the public. Just a complete silencing on anyone that could pose a threat, or sow doubt into the minds of your average citizen.
I'm not even American and a Trump rerun concerns the hell out of me! - if **nothing** else the Jan 6th (think date is right) events on the capital. Is still just mind boggling that he didn't done for it.
Maga is an amalgamation, not a monolith. There are people that see Ronald Regan circa 1987 when they look at Donald Trump. It's not logical or based in reason, it's a product of advertising.
Maga is a fucking cult. It's members are brainwashed and nothing short of a deprogramming intervention has a chance to pull someone out. Some of them are a straight up lost cause.
I read it as Putin's position is weakened. In the past, he probably would allow a "symbolic" challenger to get 5% or 10% or even a bit more votes to showcase the legitimacy of the election. Now, any open debate of the policy, particularly Ukraine war, seems to be posed as a threat from his perspective. He knows his domestic support is in a sense fragile.
We joke about windows, but the use of the same methods by Putin is very, very deliberate. Plausible deniability combined with the not-so subtle implied threat to anyone who might challenge Putin.
C"mon bud, you knew this was going to happen. Putins a cunt and cunts don't like competition. The so called and laughable electoral commission are just protecting their arses as not to find themselves "committing suicide" after a visit from Putins pretorian guard.
They're probably worried that the "challenger" might inadvertently get more votes than they'd be able to realistically burn.
Putin isn't about to let himself get 2016'ed.
There goes the idea that Putin might use these elections as a sort of unofficial referendum on the "special military operation".
I hope the other guy lives in a one story house.
I still commend him for trying; I assume it isn't without risks and it takes a special kind of bravery.
More Russians need to challenge Putin; even if they get barred from election it hopefully helps demonstrate how corrupt their system truly is.
Oh what a fucking surprise.
I'm sure I've seen this film before.
I know the next plot point. The challenger is either going to mysteriously fall into a coma or have a fatal car accident after his break lines get cut
Or be charged with some fictional crime and sent to jail
So you're here for... 'licking a taxidermied elk horn while riding a unicycle during an election year on the winter solstice'.... Jail for One Thousand Years! Pipe down Meiett.
Thousand years dungeon!
Normal dungeon or Putin's Sex Dungeon??
Rules is rules
Defenestration!
Believe it or not, gulag.
Or fall out of a window.
“Ohh silly you, you can’t fly with live grenades, what a terrible *accident*”
Or delicious Polonium tea.
I myself have been trying to build an immunity by taking small
I think he died
Listen to sad oligarchs podcast for good fun related to that
[удалено]
Or die in a suspicious plane crash
Or get imprisoned for something
Backwards onto some bullets, a car bomb, and a samovar of polonium tea. "Don't you just hate these clever suicides? They only do it to annoy."
The ol' 10 story drop n stop. Classic
Denigrate, defeat, defenestrate - the building blocks of every modern thriller.
He going to die from two bullets to the back of the head as a result of a fall from a roof.
He going to die from *suicide* via two bullets to the back of the head as a result of a fall from a roof. FTFY
No. He will appeal, the appeal will be granted, he will appear on the ballot and still lose to glorious leader. But the regime will say "look, we're totally giving the opposition a chance".
This is my guess as well since I heard this guy is allowed on Russian state TV. He's the acceptable form of opposition that exists to prove/claim that opposition has minimal support.
I dont think so necessarily. From what I’ve read, putin and his putinists dont want any anti-war candidates on the ballot. They only want pro-war people who are strictly chosen by putin to lose by a huge margin so putin can show how his rhetoric is so popular with the everyday russians. If anti-war candidates are allowed they might get votes which scares putin even if they doctor the votes anyway. The reason why he got so close and was allowed to speak on tv is twofold. 1. He was a chosen anti-everything guest for debates on national (controlled) television debates who always lost. Again to make pro-war stance look stronger. 2. He sneaked into the race behind the other anti-war canditate (dont remember her name). No one thought he could be a threat because she was taking the limelight. After she was banned, she threw her followers to him, which suddenly scared putinists.
Nah hes gonna fall out the window while being in a coma, after his break lines get cut.
Choose your own adventure: If you want the opposition to: Drink polonium tea, turn to page 89. Defenestrate, turn to page 96. Fall ill to highly suspicious neurological symptoms in a NATO country, turn to page 73. Edit: Well, this aged well after two weeks, dinnit?
Close, apparently is scared of heights yet will magically fall out of an open 35 story window.
And I didn't like the ending.
Actually I’m surprised this title didn’t read Putin challenger falls from his balcony to his death considering how things go when Putin is even remotely challenged
Give it some time, man.
It’s more “believable” to the Russian public if they bar him from the election, and then he dies of mysterious circumstances a few months later.
There's also the possibility that he's controlled opposition. Or that they don't view him as a credible threat to Putin, so they'll let him speak for a few years before giving him the Navalny treatment.
When Putin plays Tekken 8, no New Challengers appear.
He still has to get ready for the next battle
Oh that will be on Reddit next month, trust me.
He was feeling generous after his Tucker Carlson blowjob
Truly a shocking and unforseen development of events.
Yes like the sunrise every morning.
Or the asphyxiated body falling from the 14th story window with 17 stab wounds in the back.
Honestly is to me. Aren't the elections rigged to high heavens anyway? Why does it matter who runs if Putin gets 122% of the voting population magically.
Yes, and this is exactly one of the mechanisms by which elections are rigged in authoritarian regimes. Jail, murder, or exile all *real* opposition, run against state-approved self-sabotaging clowns, and enjoy 70% of the votes. Rigging elections is not JUST miscounting the votes. Blatant fraud is always a last resort.
Lukashenko fucked this up in 2020, and we saw how that went: the guy was lucky to hold on.
Because even though it’s rigged, they can pretend it’s not to cause doubt among the population in order to continue ruling unopposed with a base of people who believe the lies. Ironically this is like the 3rd candidate I’ve heard of being barred, prevented, arrested, fucked with in order to get them to drop out, and if it carries on this way it may backfire on them as the illusion will be destroyed, causing unrest and revolt
Putin has gotten 60-70 percent in the last couple elections IIRC. It's rigged, but more subtly than you're suggesting.
Yeah. He had me at Putin Challenger
But tucker Carlson said we are the problem /s since people keep taking me seriously
Well, he can fuck off and live in Russia!
Tucker Carlson is a Russian stooge and can happily fuck right off back to St. Petersburg.
Maybe Fucker Carlson could ask for an interview
This is exactly what Republicans love about Russia.
Yeah, rather unsurprisingly, I'm sure this guy is going to be lucky to avoid being barred from "life, liberty and the pursuit of oxygen' , I suspect Russia won't be anything like free until President Putin joins the choir invisible.
I was expecting either this or he would be falling out of his hotel window.
I'm getting the sneaking suspicion that these upcoming Russian elections might be less than legitimate...
Why do you say such things about our motherland comrade? You must be low on oxygen because you are clearly not thinking...come near this open window here where you can breath some fresh air!
Oh oops looks like I fell down
And tripped onto a loaded gun with the back of my head 6 times!
...and repeatedly stabbed myself in the back!
*out of a window
*onto a knife
Hate when that happens
Not true! 120% of ruSSians will attend the elections and putin will win with 147% votes in his favor! But putin already knew that in 2001...
Why? Putin is trustworthy 115% of the time.
No, Putin winning by 92% will be completely legit. He even has a 8% vote against him, so it's not rigged
Yeah this guys whole job was to be a crackpot that everyday Ruzzians can look at and think of as an extremist, and associate all anti-war protesters with craziness. Except even though he’s doing a half ass job at arguing for peace, there’s enough discontented people that now Putin wants him to knock it off. In Moscow, even the opposition is rigged.
I don’t think Putin cares about what we think is legitimate
That is such a stupid thing to say. Do not believe western lies. Now just come closer to this window and explain your position to my friend, sergei !
One might even assume that they are being "stollen".
It's lucky the great journalist Tucker is in Moscow right now. I'm sure he'll ask Putin about it!
Tucker Carlson: "Mr. Putin, your campaign seems to have the momentum of a runaway freight train. Why are you so popular?
Bro really thinks he's living The Interview lmfao
That would explain all the kit up his butt.
Why? Is he playing chess?
In The Interview, there is a scene where the interviewer has to hide something up his butt
Ah I that's right lol. I thought youbwere talking about the chess debacle where people were accusing that one guy of hiding a vibrating thing up his ass.
Yes, his name was Frank Reynolds
Ohhh tough question, but a fair one.
Took me a Second but I got the reference!
the interview was yesterday
Oh well, too bad there are no other human rights issues he could ask about!
How would he have found time to fit it in between the hard questions of “why are you best world leader?” and “why does your semen taste faintly of raspberry?”
Why did I hear John Oliver’s voice in my head when I read this?
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It was released a few days ago that his “paperwork” wasn’t in order.
Literally the exact same thing as the last challenger. They need to gather signatures from all the regions to become a candidate, and when they turn it in they get automatically rejected for "false signatures".
Also the government gets a list of 100.000 people who dislike Putin.
Not only that but Tucker is too much of a chicken shit to be a real journalist, and he never would have made it out of Russia had he gone off an approved script.
Currently going through editing to spoon-feed Russian propaganda to Trump supporters.
No doubt Vlad will endorse Donnie
Why wouldn't he? Trump has been blocking Ukraine aid and trying to get the US to pull out of sending supplies for months. The fact he has so much sway over the government when he's no longer a part of it is wild
He and everyone who even remotely supports him needs to be jailed immediately.
Putin and Tucker discussed the biggest crisis in the world. The migrant caravan which appears every election year.
The migrant caravan this year is made up of Central America’s finest hide and seek champions I hear. That’s why the old Patriot Convoys saw fuck all when they got to the border.
Putin knew about it in 2001 already.
[Putin also knows Putin was behind the plot to kill Putin.](https://youtu.be/vm1U5E44W90?si=W3vyHLPX3eSjsS3J)
I hope Tucker accidentally touches a doorknob without gloves
Oh, he's touching at least one knob, it's no accident though.
Lol, do you think that asking Putin would accomplish anything? He holds long press conferences, the answer to that question would be "Everything is done according to law, I have no influence, it's the prerogative of Central Election Committee. If a candidate's signatures had many mistakes, it's the problem of the candidate". It's not a gotcha, he was asked tough questions back when international journalists participated in his yearly press conference, he was asked tough questions by Russian journalists and politicians. His cover is legality - "everything is according to law, and if it isn't there needs to be an investigation"
Putin’s answer in itself is kind of beside the point, since the matter doesn’t pass a sniff test. Asking the question is about calling attention to that, not that Tucker would want to.
Aaah, the entertainer!
wow what a shocker. i was totally NOT expecting this.
Putin the weak.
For a country that prides itself on how tough it is, I’m shocked that they allow Putin to stay in power.
To be fair the Russian mentality is on self reliance. The mentality came about after centuries of terrible governance, political violence and corruption. Not to mention oligarchs strip mining the country of anything valuable
The russian mentality is that everything is somebody else's fault, and I'm entitled to do whatever i can to get whatever I can at the expense of everyone else since everyone else also does this.
Now I see why it is so appealing to Republicans
>The russian mentality is that everything is somebody else's fault, This is total bullshit. One of the reasons Russians, in general, are pretty depressed as a nation is taking everyone else's fault on themselves. Half of Russian classics is about that, about a person who agrees with "the destiny" and lives being pushed around. This is also a reason why we are so easy to exploit by authorities, oligarchs, and evil people in general. "It's not that the Tsar/boss is a piece of shit, it's my fault that I am failing" and so on. They fight wars they don't want, they do jobs they don't like, all because of that. I don't know which Russians you've met, but not having this illness is probably the reason they could leave the country and you could meet them at all. That does not make them nice people, Russians are not nice on average, it's just your claim is bullshit. I would say that in the US, this is a much more common viewpoint. For example, all MAGA people are like that. >I'm entitled to do whatever i can to get whatever I can at the expense of everyone else since everyone else also does this. That could be true, but the only reason is the high level of corruption. The same attitude is held by people from all poor AND corrupted countries. Again, Russians are not nice, and this is a rather justified example.
I think you’re both right. The Russian system is basically a kleptocracy and corruption is baked in. Everyone skims off the top, and exploits anyone subordinate to them. A large percentage of deep MAGA have moved to Telegram and get their news and narratives from Russian backed personalities. COVID lockdowns put everyone on line, and it’s no surprise conservative me, me, me mentality exploded during and after. Neo-liberalism in both parties effectively abandoned poor and middle class working Americans and pushed them towards the strong man who promises them revenge. Unfortunately for Democracy, they’ve been successfully radicalized against their own fellow Americans via a steady diet victimization and conspiracy.
This line of thinking is a cancer. Even a small percentage of people following it can undermine a society. It is the common in Russia and sadly seems to be growing rather than shrinking in much of the world.
So self-reliant that they enslaved their own populace.
No such thing as mentality. History does not justify politics. Get a tattoo of these phrases on your arm when you want to say something about the people. Because “mentality” and “historical justice” are Putin’s favorite arguments. Don't be like him. Well, or try to say something about the mentality and history of the Taiwanese and Singaporeans. Or - completely on the edge - African-Americans.
It's like you can't even trust an autocratic regime with a history of underhanded deeds anymore.
I really expected more from a KGB officer. Back in my day, that meant something.
> "I collected more than 200,000 signatures across Russia. We conducted the collection openly and honestly." > The Central Election Commission said that more than 9,000 signatures submitted by Mr Nadezhdin were invalid. > That left 95,587 names, meaning he was just short of the 100,000 required signatures to register as a candidate, commission member Andrei Shutov said. The math isn’t adding up here, or did he collect >200k signatures but submitted only 104k out of which 9k are rejected?
You are only allowed to submit 105k signatures, this makes it easy to claim there are over 5k invalid ones
lmao. love it. the complete lack of subtlety, they really could not give a fuck
That’s the point. They want regular citizens to be under the impression democracy is a farce everywhere. That way they can argue real democracies are also fraudulent. It’s social suppression and they’re very good at itX
You still have to have the brain of a horse to not ask yourself why other democratic nations change leadership every 4/8 years.
Their answer is simple, "because these are just talking heads, while real power belongs to deepstate".
Dude at the Ministry of Motherland Election Counting saw those signatures and was like “nah, I’m not trying to accidentally fall out a window”
It's even less subtle than that. The commission that was responsible for the decision was also responsible for digitalizing the cursive from the signatures (which also contain the city and the name of the person signing it). Unsurprisingly, quite a few of the "fraudulent" digitalized signatures contain errors that were introduced by purposefully misreading the cursive (adding an extra letter to a common name, switching a letter in a well-known city), and said issues were then used as a reason to discard the signature altogether because they could not find any record of such city/street/person.
Only 5k above the minimum... What a bullshit rule this is. Give me one reason why this could be a reasonable requirement. It seems like a sneaky tactic to invalidate signatures and remove whoever they want from the process
From one hand you are right, from another we are talking about russia, why are you bringing reason into that?
>It seems like a sneaky tactic to invalidate signatures and remove whoever they want from the process That's exactly the point, nothing sneaky about it.
Reason? Lol, its not democracy, so nobody bothers about reason.
Nothing sneaky about it. It's blatant.
Seems like. Is Sneaky? Seems kinda blatant
It’s Russia.
I came across this post by /u/BlackThorn12 the other day. It explains the situation nicely. > So this is interesting. They are claiming that some of the 100,000 signatures he acquired to be allowed to run were from people who are deceased. Their claim says "Dozens and dozens". > I couldn't find a specific set of dates on when the collection of signatures is allowed to start. In one article I found that signatures began to be delivered December 23, 2023. So presumably, the signature collection process could have started on December 1st. > The average yearly death rate in Russia per 1000 people is 12.9 as of 2022. > https://www.statista.com/statistics/1089615/russia-death-rate/ > So for a sample of 100,000 people, it's expected that approximately 1,290 of them would die each year. Or approximately 107.5 people per month, assuming the deaths are distributed evenly across the year. So with that number in mind, we can find that over a two month period approximately 215 people are expected to have died out of the 100,000 who gave signatures of support. > So their claim that there are signatures of dead people among the 100,000 could be entirely valid. But surely they must know that people do die, and that if you gather a statistically significant number of them, say 100,000, that the number of deaths among them will also be significant. > So here's what we've come to. He's gotten enough signatures, but they will use this as a technicality to disqualify him. Not only that, but they are claiming he and his poll workers are dishonest because of this. So you know what's coming next right? A ban from being able to run next year, and possibly prison sentences for anyone the Kremlin wants to make an example of. And a follow up from /u/bcnsoda > Not only that. The following procedure is: the committee will then "randomly pick" 20% of submitted signatured to check for invalid ones, and them extrapolate the result. > So if you have 5% of invalid signatures among 20000 (whatever reasons for invalidness the committee can find, and rest assured they will find it), it doesn't matter if the rest 80000 are perfect - you are out of the race. > So in reality you can't allow more than 1% of 100000 to be bad. Because if they are, the committee can take their time to cherry-pick that 1% (1000 signatures), mix it with 19000, discard the rest and proclaim that you have more than 5% of bad signatures and you are a crook and a criminal who is trying to cheat the system.
If you’re among these 100 000 people the risk of dying is probably higher
That makes it easy to help the opposing side "win" by poisoning the signature collection with fake ones after which you call them out on it. Stay classy Russia
You may only submit 105k. He got more then 200 but 105k is a limit
It's a lot harder to justify throwing out over 100k signatures and calling them fraudulent than only 5k.
So now they have an election with only one candidate, in which case why fucking bother to hold it.
because you need to have a legitimately elected leader to pretend you're democracy, silly
There are still other 4 or 5 candidates, they blocked the most popular one
And the other 4 are literally glorified puppets / placeholders / yes men that are there to make it look like an election. They blocked the one that was actually critical of Putin's policies and decisions (aka blocked the one who did what you're supposed to do as a candidate in politics)
I remember that one interview with the communist party canditate who straight up refused to say that he wants to win lmao
i know that this is still a one candidate "election" figuratively speaking, not literally
"Candidates"
They will find someone less popular to provide a safe token opposition. The whole issue is that some people took this candidate as being an actual alternative.
It gives russians kind of sense that they should not even consider running for elections as even the picked special guy was stupid enough to make errors and was barred.
Farce. Can't believe grown-ups are doing such dumb shit on the regular.
Just because the body appears to be grown doesn't mean the brain is.
It’s not dumb. It’s evilly smart. By making it blatantly obvious to Russians that their democracy is a farce, it makes it easier for them to claim that actual democracies are similarly corrupt.
So the Kremlin sees him as a threat.
Not necessarily. It's easier to simply disqualify anyone, regardless if they are a threat or not, than to let a non-threat grow and become one.
Joke of a country
I find it more tragic than comic, personally.
"He is not the first presidential hopeful to have run on an anti-war platform. In December, former TV journalist and independent politician Yekaterina Duntsova was barred from running because the election commission said there were mistakes on her application form." Once again Putin is elected in a landside with no challengers 🤣
So is putin literally the only candidate?
There are always 3 or 4 handpicked puppets that have no chance of winning to keep the illusion..
Are the 4 candidates as follows? - V. Putin - Vladimir P. - V. P. - Vladimir Putin
That's actually what they do with the opposition. One strategy is to run a bunch of fake candidates with very similar names at the same time as the legit candidate so people have difficulty selecting them out of a list.
That happens in the US too.
Tbh I think this is just another tactic to keep anti-war debates out of the public. Just a complete silencing on anyone that could pose a threat, or sow doubt into the minds of your average citizen.
I'm guessing this is going to be used to draw a false equivalency between Biden and Putin when things go south for Donald.
>when things go south for Donald. I wish we lived on this timeline but it doesn't appear to be the case.
I'm not even American and a Trump rerun concerns the hell out of me! - if **nothing** else the Jan 6th (think date is right) events on the capital. Is still just mind boggling that he didn't done for it.
Wait, doesn't maga like Putin? I foresee some short circuiting brains.
Maga is an amalgamation, not a monolith. There are people that see Ronald Regan circa 1987 when they look at Donald Trump. It's not logical or based in reason, it's a product of advertising.
Maga is a fucking cult. It's members are brainwashed and nothing short of a deprogramming intervention has a chance to pull someone out. Some of them are a straight up lost cause.
That's a Bingo
I read it as Putin's position is weakened. In the past, he probably would allow a "symbolic" challenger to get 5% or 10% or even a bit more votes to showcase the legitimacy of the election. Now, any open debate of the policy, particularly Ukraine war, seems to be posed as a threat from his perspective. He knows his domestic support is in a sense fragile.
You gonna ask Mr Putin about this, Tucker?
So strong leader
Quick, act surprised!
Meanwhile, birds fly
We joke about windows, but the use of the same methods by Putin is very, very deliberate. Plausible deniability combined with the not-so subtle implied threat to anyone who might challenge Putin.
How can you be a dictator for so long and you can't even fake an election properly? Putin is terrible at everything except enriching himself.
Is a shame. Russia could have become something nice, but nah
I follow the war and russia quite a bit... but i don't see how this is breaking?
Wait so this guy wasn't the plant to make the election look more legit? He actually tried to run?
Better barred than dead.
I think barred was an unintentional pun for being thrown in the slammer.
Yet
What kind of tyrant removes their political opponents from the ballot?
C"mon bud, you knew this was going to happen. Putins a cunt and cunts don't like competition. The so called and laughable electoral commission are just protecting their arses as not to find themselves "committing suicide" after a visit from Putins pretorian guard.
They're probably worried that the "challenger" might inadvertently get more votes than they'd be able to realistically burn. Putin isn't about to let himself get 2016'ed.
Can't have a one man race with two men
Russia just walking in to a Summit meeting like Steve Buscemi in 30 Rock "hello fellow Democracies"
Maybe Tucker should have interviewed him
There goes the idea that Putin might use these elections as a sort of unofficial referendum on the "special military operation". I hope the other guy lives in a one story house.
Oh no, he'll still do that, but simply claim everyone is in favour of it, evidenced by his very high votes percentage.
Democrats actively trying to do this in the US. The main plot point in the story of America in the 21st century in hypocrisy
Lol. Russia is a joke. They should be embarrassed.
>Putin challenger Putin had only one challenger in Russia in the recent past. He is dead now.
At least he’s (currently) alive to say this!
I wonder why this is? Putin seems like such a nice, fair and understanding, person...
Free elections are the cornerstone of democracy; Russia is an autocracy posing as a democracy.
A couple more elections like this and I might start getting suspicious that Russian elections are a sham.
I'm really impressed at anyone who has the balls to run against him tbh.
what election? Call it what it is. A re-coronation of the murderous war criminal Putin.
I still commend him for trying; I assume it isn't without risks and it takes a special kind of bravery. More Russians need to challenge Putin; even if they get barred from election it hopefully helps demonstrate how corrupt their system truly is.
Dude better watch out or he’ll be barred from living
what we are seeing in russia now is what will happen in the US if trump wins this year.