Moscow's blockchain voting system cracked a month before election

There's just no way any elections in Russia would produce the results not approved by the government. Government controls the entire chain of custody, from ballot counting to final vote tallies, and has been routinely falsifying the results at all levels. It often doesn't even need to tell those in charge to do anything: they "know" who should win and they make sure it happens. They also know they will have significant issues, career, legal, and otherwise, if it doesn't happen.

Funniest thing is, they don't even need to do this. Because nearly all of the mass media is under government control, the incumbents have overwhelming support of the people as it is.

OK, so I think a little political context about this would be useful.

On September 8th, Russia has "universal voting day", with elections to different regional parliaments, heads of some regions and even additional members of parliament. This year, the campaign have been very political because of Moscow parliament - which was for years treated as a completely uninteresting event with very low news coverage and turnout. This year, however, in response to opposition candidates getting a serious momentum, many have been disallowed to run, triggering escalating protests - some legal, some illegal, with sometimes brutal reaction to the police, which, in turn, led even more people to take part in the protest. This amount of people in the street haven't been seen since 2011 protests.

So, after the trust in the elections, rule of law and democracy process have been eroded this much, I'm genuinely surprised that they even bothered to build a buzzword-fueled voting system.

Did you confirm the parent was American before posting that?

Even if they were, how does one person's comment on HN apply to a couple hundred million people? It obviously doesn't. You're making a similar type of intellectual mistake as the parent (Russia bad; Americans bad).

Think of the possible outcomes:

-Status quo, old voting system. Corrupt process with vote results that remain in force. Nothing changes.

-Novel, manipulated system where the regime loses the vote. The vote gets overturned because it's illegitimate in the wrong way. Maybe embarrassing to the authorities?

They likely published to GitHub after it was finished