Three near-identical Boris Vishnevskys on St Petersburg election ballot

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 10:40 PM UTC

unrequitedlove wrote: post #131

lostmsu wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you show a quote from somewhere, where "totalitarian" would imply total control? Wikipedia's description of "Totalitarianism" matches state of things in Russia exactly: - prohibits all opposition parties // check - outlaws individual opposition to the state // check - extremely high degree of control over public life // check - private life // that maybe not, but I am not sure what that means - political power is…

Totalitarian regimes demand total participation (hence the “total” part). In Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany you either participated in the Komsomol, voted for the right candidate, studied marxism/whatever the nazi equivalent was, publicly expressed loyalist opinions etc, or you were considered a malicious actor. Authoritarian regimes demand compliance. In modern Russia no one really cares what you think unless you’re…

Post by deanCommie » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

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…

Post by alisonkisk » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 10:56 PM UTC

stefan_ wrote: post #144

Symbiote wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment is upvoted now, but possibly the downvotes were for describing it as a "trick". One of the candidates they managed to interview admitted some signatures were forged for $5 each. (The link opened fine for me.)

The interview says they paid someone for collecting signatures, not forging them. Of course at the price of $5 that might have been implicit at the time.

Post by astronautjones » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 11:01 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #104

roveo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this year's elections, many of the pro-regime candidates are registered as having no party affiliation because of the very bad ratings of United Russia party. Also, the authorities don't care about people voting confidently at all, quite the opposite. It's mandated by law though to list candidates' previous names if changed, which is done in this case. But you have to be aware of this spoiler strategy to notice, w…

> Also, the authorities don't care about people voting confidently at all, quite the opposite. Can you explain this?

Post by dopamean » Tue, Sep 07, 2021, 11:23 PM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #128

nomoreplease wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I didn't know this. It's absolutely bizarre. I wonder why Russia even bothers with elections -- it's clearly not on the bandwagon for western liberalism, which seems fair enough to me, but then why go through the motions?