Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 177 posts

Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot

#81

Post by IAmEveryone »

grishka wrote: post #56

Why do they even go through this much trouble when they can just count votes such that Единая Россия comes out as a winner, like they did on every election I remember. They stuff ballots into boxes. They invalidate ballots with "wrong" votes. They just simply change the numbers in the protocols without anyone rechecking or recounting. Worst of all, the people who do it are usually school teachers, because polling sta…

It's terribly hard to actually falsify the vote counts across thousands of polling places. In theory, someone observing the process, as should be legal everywhere, will notice the irregularities.

It's not impossible, obviously–especially if you have full control of at least anyone important. But plausible deniability suffers rather fast, and that's a valuable assets at the Putin-level of dic(tator|k)ishness.

Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot

#83

Post by dukeofdoom »

a-priori wrote: post #4

This 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…

They're the only party to oppose vaccine passports in Canada. So can't be all bad. Polling around 5-8% now and gaining, high enough might make a big difference who next leader of Canada will be. On the conspiracy side, some are speculating he's a plant to help Trudeau.

Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot

#84

Post by wussboy »

throwdecro wrote: post #18
gpm wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This left the People's Party with no seats in parliament. Note that even if the Rhinoceros votes went for the peoples party the same thing would have happened...

> Note that even if the Rhinoceros votes went for the peoples party the same thing would have happened... Which is probably for the best. If this type of trickery had made a meaningful difference, the people fooled by the trick would have had some legitimate complaints. Moreover it would have really undermined the credibility of the winner, even if it wasn't their doing.

Maybe it's a shame that nothing of consequence hinged on it. If someone was aggrieved, we're more likely to get a court case out of it and the law changed.

Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot

#85

Post by dukeofdoom »

baybal2 wrote: post #58
ukoki wrote: post #32

I'm taking this as a pretty good sign. My poorly informed outsider's opinion of Russian local elections prior to this was that organised fraud was so endemic that resorting to such obvious measures would be unnecessary.

No, they will falsify anyways. It's just them getting a complete reassurance that it's at least thrice rigged. So, what is being falsified? Everything. 1. Public polls (including fake "independent" polling companies appearing out of nowhere just few months before the elections) 2. Exit polls 3. Debates (some times fake doppelganger opposition candidates are sent to debates instead of real ones!) 4. Media landscape (a…

for a second there, I thought you were writing about the US election.

Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot

#86

Post by unmole »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #41

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.

This happens in Indian elections all the time. And I'm rather surprised to find someone holding the Indian judicial system in such high regard.

Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot

#87

Post by doikor »

nomoreplease wrote: post #47
NortySpock wrote: post #34

Happened 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

In the Russian case they also created fake parties for these fake candidates with very similar sounding names.

Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot

#88

Post by unmole »

int_19h wrote: post #59
s_trumpet wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Russian electoral system allows for unaffiliated candidates, and spoilers usually run as such.

Unaffiliated candidates or independents as they are called are also assigned a symbol.

The symbols of recognised political parties are fairly common knowledge and are emphasised during rge campaign

Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot

#89

Post by redleggedfrog »

NortySpock wrote: post #34

Happened 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...

Of course it did.

Re: Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot

#90

Post by gpm »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #83
a-priori wrote: post #4

This 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…

They're the only party to oppose vaccine passports in Canada. So can't be all bad. Polling around 5-8% now and gaining, high enough might make a big difference who next leader of Canada will be. On the conspiracy side, some are speculating he's a plant to help Trudeau.

Cbc's polling average has them at 4.8%, which isn't inside your 5-8% interval... but it's true that they have been slowly trending upwards... though whether you should prefer a momentum model or a reversion to the mean model for polling variation is unclear.

Separately, giving airtime to ridiculous conspiracies that even you don't believe is simply not helpful.

Post reply on HN