If this happened in India, the SC would strike it down so hard. You don't need a law for every specific wrongdoing. You just need a decent judicial system.
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
#42Happened in Florida in 2020 as well... https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2020/12/02/the-name-is-the-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/20/florida-ele... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
The Russian case will likely end differently.
Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#43A friend of mine (and my successor as chairman of the Chicago Republican Party) filed a case in the U.S. Supreme Court this week over the same tactic right here in Chicago. https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-michael-madigan-c... If we win this thing, then filing sham candidates will become illegal in the U.S. It's an utterly corrupt practice.
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Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#44Happened in Florida in 2020 as well... https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2020/12/02/the-name-is-the-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/20/florida-ele... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
John F. Kennedy used this trick:
https://www.politico.com/gallery/2012/06/16-worst-political-...
Note the two "Joseph Russo" entries on the ballot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_history_of_John_F._K...
Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#45If this happened in India, the SC would strike it down so hard. You don't need a law for every specific wrongdoing. You just need a decent judicial system.
The practice of assigning electoral symbols to each political party is also very useful for differentiating them.
https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/india-election-party-s...
Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#46Do Russian ballot papers not include the name of the candidate's political party? Ideally they would also include the parties' logos, which would be required to be distinct from previously-registered logos, so that people with literacy problems could still vote confidently.
Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#47Happened in Florida in 2020 as well... https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2020/12/02/the-name-is-the-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/20/florida-ele... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
In the Florida case it was/is a common surname, not a full name. In this Russian case, two humans changed their full name to match. Presumably paid to do so. Very different situations
Edit: in the Russian case, they also changed their appearance to match
According to a sibling comment, this strategy goes back to JohnF Kennedy at least. Except that the Russians take it to the next level
Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#48A friend of mine (and my successor as chairman of the Chicago Republican Party) filed a case in the U.S. Supreme Court this week over the same tactic right here in Chicago. https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-michael-madigan-c... If we win this thing, then filing sham candidates will become illegal in the U.S. It's an utterly corrupt practice.
Not this particular case but just to give context on why padding the primary with sham candidates of the same ethnic group is an issue, but also in Chicago it has happened that people change their names to imply certain ethnic/heritage/characteristics like Phillip Spiwak (R) became Shannon P. O’Malley (D) to win an elected judge position in 2018 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/illinois-judge-candidat...
Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#49Maybe 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 cand…
And what I'm saying is that the change of appearance in this particular case is less surprising than the fact that double or triple name candidates on a ballot "regularly" occur.
Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you can usually ignore people who complain about "whataboutism" - on HN at least it usually boils down to someone trying to dismiss a legitimate comparison with "Hey you can't say that, I said it first!"
"you're ruining my point by showing my hypocrisy"
Precisely. Also I think I'm being downvoted by people misinterpreting my use of "usually" as "in every single case without exception". But anecdotally, nearly every time I've seen the whataboutism response it has been in that context I described - someone trying to dismiss a legitimate criticism by deploying what they think is a sort of cheat code.