General Discussion

Fact-checking Trump’s claim the U.S. is the ‘only country’ that uses mail-in voting

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-trumps-claim-the-u-s-is-the-only-country-that-uses-mail-in-voting

Data compiled by a Sweden-based organization that advocates for democracy globally found in an October 2024 report found that 34 countries or territories allow mail-in voting, which it refers to as “postal voting.” The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found that of the 34 countries or territories, 12 allow all voters to vote by mail and in 22 permit only some voters to vote this way. “Europe has the largest number of countries that make in-country postal voting available to all or some voters,” the report said.

2024 Russian presidential election

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Russian_presidential_election

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Early voting opened on 26 February and lasted until 14 March to allow certain residents in remote areas in 37 federal subjects of Russia as well as in the regions of Ukraine that it annexed following its invasion in 2022 to vote. In the latter areas, a campaign called InformUIK was set up to encourage participation in the election, with its representatives going door-to-door escorted by armed men to compile voter lists and collect ballots from residences. A resident of Kherson Oblast described the elections in his area as a "comedy show", noting that households were being visited by "two locals – one holding a list of voters and the other a ballot box – and a military man with a machine gun".

Russian officials also used home visits by the mobile polling stations to monitor the population and find those participating in resistance activities or refusing to obtain Russian government documents. Reports also emerged of Russian-installed authorities coercing people to vote by withholding social benefits and healthcare treatment, while human rights activists said at least 27 Ukrainians were arrested for refusing to vote in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts. Despite Russian electoral laws prohibiting those without Russian passports from voting, voters in occupied Ukraine were allowed to present any valid identification documents, including a Ukrainian passport or driving license. In Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, soldiers armed with machine guns sealed off apartments being visited by mobile polling teams. In one instance, a man who fled his village near Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast, to Ukrainian-controlled territory following the Russian invasion alleged that his name appeared in Russian-produced voter lists and was listed as having voted for Putin by election officials.

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On the regular election days, polls opened at 08:00 local time in Kamchatka Krai on 15 March and are expected to close at 20:00 local time in Kaliningrad Oblast on 17 March. Independent watchdogs were prevented from observing the conduct of the election, as only registered candidates and state-backed advisory bodies were allowed to send observers to polling stations. The independent election monitor Golos described the election as the "most vapid" since the 2000 election, noting that campaigning was "practically unnoticeable" and that authorities were "doing everything" to prevent people noticing that an election was taking place while state media provided less airtime to the election compared to 2018. It also described Putin's campaign as disguised by his activities as president, while his registered opponents were "demonstrably passive"

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Allegations of fraud

Statistical analyses

According to a Novaya Gazeta investigation using a method proposed by mathematician Sergey Shpilkin [ru], around 22 million of the non-online (polling booth) votes for Putin were falsified, out of 64.7 million non-online votes for Putin in total. Novaya Gazeta described the analysis showing "record levels of fraud even for a Russian presidential election". Meduza carried out statistical analyses on the official results released by the CEC. Based on scatter plots of the vote percentage for Putin compared to turnout, a tail in which voter turnout visually correlates to Putin support, which appeared weakly in earlier Russian presidential elections, was found by Meduza to completely dominate in 2024. "Churov's saw", a statistical effect interpreted as fraudulent in which sharp peaks at round numbers appear in voter turnout and percentage votes for Putin, was found by Meduza to have strengthened in the 2024 election, with Meduza arguing that the number of polling stations with likely fraud became the majority in 2024, while earlier the fraction of fraudulent polling stations had been a minority. Overall, Meduza stated that the 2024 presidential election "was almost certainly the most fraudulent" in "modern Russian history", and that the "sheer magnitude of fraud eclipses that of 2018".

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