Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
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Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#2Maybe the most surprising thing about this is how commonplace it is for multiple candidates to share the same name. From the article:
> “Double” candidates regularly pop up during Russia’s election cycles, which can be surprisingly cut-throat despite the expectation that the ruling United Russia party will maintain a majority in the Duma. The rising tide of opposition to United Russia and growing support for the Communist KPRF have apparently spooked the government and nominating doppelgängers can siphon off precious votes in close contests.
Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#3This is pretty similar to Ross Perot splitting the republican vote in the U.S. '92 election except that Perot and Bush should have been political allies and instead split the vote in favor of Clinton. I can't think of an example of using this against an opponent as described in the article could certainly be used here (though I suspect using duplicate names) would be harder to hide).
Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#4This reminds me of the 2019 Canadian federal election. There was a new party in that election led by a man named Maxime Bernier called the People's Party. They're a far-right populist party and generally awful. Bernier himself was running in Beauce, Quebec, which he had represented through the Conservative party since 2006 before he had created the People's Party.
But then the Rhinoceros Party, a satirical political party, announced a new candidate for Beauce named... Maxime Bernier. When asked about the confusion, the Rhinoceros Party's Maxime Bernier said, "If you're not sure, then vote for both!".
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/maxime-bernier-rhino...
The Conservative candidate won with 22817 votes, the People's Party candidate came second with 16772, and the Rhinoceros Party candidate came last with 1072 votes and another 1147 were rejected. This left the People's Party with no seats in parliament.
Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#5Russia is a totalitarian dictatorship, why does Putin bother with silly tactics like this? A trick to try to lend an appearance of credibility to elections?
Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#6This is pretty similar to Ross Perot splitting the republican vote in the U.S. '92 election except that Perot and Bush should have been political allies and instead split the vote in favor of Clinton. I can't think of an example of using this against an opponent as described in the article could certainly be used here (though I suspect using duplicate names) would be harder to hide).
I'm sure you didn't intend this, but your comment is strongly reminiscent of this classic Russian political tactic for dealing with criticism from the west: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#7This is endemic in eastern European politics.
It is especially prevalent among parties oriented towards Russian speaking populace in the Baltics.
I've never seen it work, but maybe there is a bit of Ross Perot(not that Clinton/Bush looked like Perot) effect.
PS it is hilarious that when I made a comment I didn't realize this could be taken as a what-aboutism comment.
So on a meta level I should be more lenient when posters do similar things in other threads. Maybe not every poster is actively engaging in organized https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism but there is an urge to draw parallels on some psychological level.
Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#8Maybe the most surprising thing about this is how commonplace it is for multiple candidates to share the same name. From the article: > “Double” candidates regularly pop up during Russia’s election cycles, which can be surprisingly cut-throat despite the expectation that the ruling United Russia party will maintain a majority in the Duma. The rising tide of opposition to United Russia and growing support for the Comm…
That's not an accidental match of the names or finding "doppelgangers" somewhere, it's intentionally making doppelgangers - these "spoiler" candidates literally changed their name before the elections, one of them was born as Viktor Bykov and the other was Alexei Shmelev. The only thing they can't legally change is the patronymic, which a key part of the name in Russia and differentiates the names of these three candidates.
Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#9This is pretty similar to Ross Perot splitting the republican vote in the U.S. '92 election except that Perot and Bush should have been political allies and instead split the vote in favor of Clinton. I can't think of an example of using this against an opponent as described in the article could certainly be used here (though I suspect using duplicate names) would be harder to hide).
> using this against an opponent as described in the article could certainly be used here
It's called a "spoiler" and they don't necessarily have to have the same or similar names to be effective, in fact, a similar tactic was used here less than a year ago:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/19/us/florida-senate-race-fr...
Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#10This is pretty similar to Ross Perot splitting the republican vote in the U.S. '92 election except that Perot and Bush should have been political allies and instead split the vote in favor of Clinton. I can't think of an example of using this against an opponent as described in the article could certainly be used here (though I suspect using duplicate names) would be harder to hide).
This tactic was used in Florida in 2020: https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2020/12/02/the-name-is-the-...