Opposition leaders say vote even more rigged than December's parliamentary elections

Kevin O'Flynn in Moscow The Guardian, Sunday 4 March 2012

Opposition leaders said that Russia's presidential elections on Sunday were even more rigged than December's parliamentary elections.

With a record number of observers at polling stations, election day was a fever of accusations of fixed votes on the social media outlets that are the main medium for the opposition.

Opposition leader and anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, installed in a bar in the centre of the city, claimed by early afternoon that it was already clear that there were more violations at this election than at the parliamentary elections in December.

" It is not an election. Even the counting of votes is not honest, " he said.

Election watchdog Golos and other observers reported the use of so-called carousels, where voters are brought round on buses to vote many times. Undercover journalists had exposed the practice in the December elections, one of many violations that sparked Russia's biggest street protests since the end of the Soviet Union.

Navalny said that the carousels were being discovered in Moscow and other big cities because of the number of new observers, who had received training beforehand to report on the elections.

Political activist Ksenia Sobchak staged a press conference with a girl who admitted to taking money to take part in a carousel. There were also reports of mass voting by absentee ballots in Moscow, which election watchers described as suspicious as it could allow voting multiple times.

Many polling stations ran out of absentee ballots before the election. One report suggested that people were being forced to collect absentee ballots and a man was arrested a few days before the election for selling them.

" People were on their knees saying: you know we will be sacked if we do not bring absentee ballots, " Irek Vuldanov, an election official outside Moscow told gazeta.ru website.

There were also numerous reports of election observers being expelled from polling stations and other minor violations. Golos website reported more than 1000 complaints about violations.

Environmental campaigner Yevgenia Chirikova wrote on Twitter (in Russian) that immigrant workers were going to polling stations having been given instructions by their employer on who to vote for.

Putin's campaign chief, Stanislav Govorukhin, rejected the claims of violations, calling them " ridiculous".

" This is the cleanest election in Russia's entire history, " he said. " The violations our rivals and the opponents of our president will now speak of are laughable."

Russia's election commission dismissed the complaints. " These complaints are prepared ahead of time and the initiators of such actions are not at all interested in questions of objectivity and the lawfulness of what has happened."

Putin retains a strong degree of support throughout Russia and has always been way ahead of the other candidates in the race.

The government installed web cameras in nearly all of the polling stations before the election as a response to fraud allegations and more than 2.5 million people signed up to use the service e. Critics say that the costly move, at nearly $500m, was just a cosmetic measure to dissuade criticism.

" It is not an election, it is a disgrace, " said Sergei Udaltsov, an opposition leader who has been jailed numerous times after protests. " We will go onto the streets tomorrow."