Barack Obama won his first election using a different procedural trick — he looked up his three opponents' ballot petitions, and challenged enough of the signatures on the petitions that they were all delisted.
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 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.
Same, maybe it's µblock Origin that fixes it? I'm using mostly stock LibreWolf with its preinstalled µBO on a MSW 10 library computer (though btw AdNauseum is a better µBO fork).
This is done by literally every single campaign/organization.
The signature process is usually outsourced to people making $.25 a signature. And there is a HUGE amount of fraud. Even when checking against the voter file. Which BTW is public info for most places, which makes it easy to fill in 'correct' data.
This happens even on legitimate large campaigns with controls who do NOT want to cheat lest they get thrown off ballot. But hire enough field organizers some are bound to cheat.
That's why usually submit sometimes 2X the required number.
What? Give me a break -- one is completely unlike the other.
Listing candidates to intentionally confuse voters is completely different than (correctly!) challenging the legitimacy of voter signatures. Calling the latter a "trick" is completely dishonest.
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 Florida a sham candidate with the same surname as the real candidate paid to run to siphon off votes from the real candidate. Completely different. Not at all similar. Nothing in common. Nothing to see in Florida, move along please.
OP said it happened In Florida but no name changes happened in Florida. My comment was meant to clarify, not argue in bad faith. I said “very” different not “completely different”. Nor did I argue that either should be ignored.
Whether there is a name change involved, the result is the same, to siphon off votes. That's the main thrust of the story in Russia and FL. I'd say very similar not very different.
Don’t be daft. The intent and result are identical. It’s not “very” different at all. It’s nominally different at best, but almost equivalent in practice. It’s intellectual dishonesty to suggest otherwise.
It's actually good for them by the way. Since in case of the complete full match they would have needed to specify their original names before the change.
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?
And he knows that, but if he won the election with 60% of votes, it would show that there are other candidates or political parties with tremendous support. Yeah, they can exist and even win in different states across the country for different political roles.
Still, the idea that he wants to show to people is that he is supported by the majority and supported with overwhelming superiority in votes. He doesn't need fraud votes to win. He needs to fraud voting to show the dramatic differences in support.
Majority of people are afraid to say otherwise. I've watched some deadpan comedian from Lithuania do some interviews in Moscow. People face change and they immediately walk away after mentioning Putin. Of course the best question was:
"What do you think Russia would look like if Putin was homosexual?"
> 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?
Why did Stalinist Russia bother with show trials? The appearance of legitimacy is enough to give cover to people who approve of the government without wanting to own up to its dirty tricks, and to mute the voices of those who disapprove.
The third of those links is the most important: in the Florida case the spoiler candidate and the man paying him to run were charged with a crime. This doesn't reverse the election, whose outcome was almost certainly changed by the scheme, but it might deter others from following this playbook.
In Russian they have the term 'political technology' [1], which means the manipulation of elections by legal means, such as creating momentum for a candidate by means of opionion polls with biased/framed questions. Now according to wikipedia, the second trick in the list are doppelganger candidates. I didn't find a proper translation of the Russian term 'political technology', how do you say that in English?
Correction: 'political consulting' is probably the correct translation, however it doesn't convey the same cynicism expressed by 'political technology'.
I really, really, really hope this becomes illegal.
In one of the FL cases, reporters went to the house of the "other" one and he literally couldn't say why he was on the ballot. That is my recollection of the story I read at the time.
A 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.
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...
There was a movie about a person searching their Irish ancestors. Ended with the protagonist confronting their father, who admitted they made it up to win votes. The movie must be decades old now.
Sorry, not from the US so I might be missing something, but the link you posted was about someone from the Democrats. Did your friend switch parties after that election (I wouldn't be surprised if that kind of thing had happened)?
It's a marriage of convenience. Until Madigan is indicted by the FBI (probably happening in the next 12mos, his underlings are helping the FBI now), if you are a (D) on his bad side, your choices are to exit Chicago politics or switch parties.
"Illegal" means contrary to the law. Plenty of things that are illegal but carry no criminal penalties.
As a practical matter, the court would rule that sham candidates are impermissible, and then their opponents would have an opportunity to remove them from the ballot via a civil lawsuit, or seek sanctions again whoever put them up, or collect civil damages, or in an extreme case overturn an election altogether.
This more seems like the Republicans are trying to tar a democratic candidate who will definitely win with some very slight of hand statements about "hispanics." Most likely it seems like there were two other people with historically-hispanic last names who also entered the election. Chicago is pretty damn hispanic if you haven't been there before and Chicago Democratic politics are especially contentious and nasty. This feels like a rat-f** job
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 party, announced a new candidate for Beauce named... Maxime Bernier. When asked about the confusion, the Rhinoceros Party's Maxime Bernier said, "If you're not sure, then vote for both!".
The Conservative candidate won with 22817 votes, the People's Party candidate came second with 16772, and the Rhinoceros Party candidate came last with 1072 votes and another 1147 were rejected. This left the People's Party with no seats in parliament.
Well, in Canada (and I'd assume elsewhere, but I've not checked) our ballots include party affiliation, so it's pretty easy to tell the candidates apart if you're paying any attention at all.
> 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.
You and I have very different understandings of the word narrow.
That's 58% vs 42% just counting the votes that went to the PPC/Conservatives. 39% vs 28% looking at all the votes in the riding. The rhino candidate got less than 2% of the votes in the riding.
Is it possible that such a move may dissuade voters from even showing up to the polls to participate in an election that they view as a sham, or as being made a circus? It certainly doesn’t build trust in democracy.
In general I'm sure that's a possibility, and it probably occurs in the Russian case. In Canada we are quite confident in our electoral system, and this sort of shenanigans doesn't change that (or result in substantial confusion, since we clearly spell out candidates political parties - indeed I suspect most people vote based on party more than based on candidate name). I don't believe for an instant that this had a substantial effect on the PPCs voter turnout.
It appears that Maxim Bernier from the Rhinoceros party hasn't registered to run in this year's election. I wonder if they've been blocked from doing so?
> 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.
Describing the PPC as "far-right" is a good way to out yourself as far-left.
It’s not much of an “outing” to reveal that I believe the Canada they want is antithetical to my belief system, and that I find the party thoroughly disgusting and worthy of mockery.
Again, to describe the PPC as "far-right" is to make a mockery of reality and out yourself as far-left. It doesn't matter if you think they're "antithetical to your belief system".
Or are you one of those childish people who throw around "far-right" as a synonym for "anything I don't like"?
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.
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 stations are often in schools.
Yes, I'll go and vote anyway. No, this won't change the outcome, but at least I'll be able to tell myself that I did my part.
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.
Usually only a few polling places actually determine an election. Based on historical vote data, you'd only flip votes in the few locations where it actually matters; for example, a few counties in a few swing states, or anywhere where the votes can be cured or recounted without being observed.
It's strange that people really don't realize how easy it is to cheat; just a little bit of leverage in the right place can tip an election.
Oh they interfere with observers a lot. It's a battle, really.
Sometimes, in some far-flung region, an election will end up being fair. Then they still find a way to ultimately "fix" the outcome — see what happened in Khabarovsk with everyone's favorite mayor Sergey Furgal. They found a court case on him from very long ago, arrested him, flew him to Moscow, then Putin dismissed him from mayorship "for loss of trust". Yeah sure, people elected him and had no problems with him, but it's lack of Putin's trust that caused him to lose his office against his and people's will.
Lots of discussions whether it will work or not. Same as 10k rubles payout for seniors. Likely people are not so much stupid and such things won't work per se. But in Russia there is the second step: falsify the elections and explain that people voted for a fake or for the party they hate because of the payout. A casual observer will have less questions, or there will be an "explanation".
It is especially prevalent among parties oriented towards Russian speaking populace in the Baltics.
I've never seen it work, but maybe there is a bit of Ross Perot(not that Clinton/Bush looked like Perot) effect.
PS it is hilarious that when I made a comment I didn't realize this could be taken as a what-aboutism comment.
So on a meta level I should be more lenient when posters do similar things in other threads. Maybe not every poster is actively engaging in organized https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism but there is an urge to draw parallels on some psychological level.
It would be an interesting analysis to see if notable names appear more often as candidates and do they draw more plus(FOR) signs than regular candidates.
That's not the same thing at all. That is just someone with the same name as some celeb. The celeb is not running in the elections.
What is discussed in the article are fake candidates with the same (changed) name (and appearance) as an actual candidate, in order to confuse voters and leech votes away from the actual candidate.
Agreed the practice is not as despicable as the St. Petersburg case. (amazing city btw)
Still the question is would this person be running in the election were their name not a match or similar to someone publicly known.
These names usually appear in the middle of the list - so are unlikely to be major players themselves.
I looked through our local candidate lists and found more suspicious cases.
There are instances of not complete matches but things like a security guard from a populist party with the same uncommon last name as the prime minister at a time.
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!"
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.
In Spain not much years ago happened a slightly different but related trick. A party changed late their logo in the ballots to a circle. Casually their rivals from the opposite ideology had adopted before a thin circle as a logo in the voting sheets (shared by all parties). The second circle was more thick (and more visible) than the other and had different letters inside. Clearly different for people with a good sight, maybe not so much for elders.
I bet that this didn't helped at the hour of counting the ballots and I wouldn't be surprised to know that a few votes were assigned wrongly that night at the slighest opportunity.
A comment for outsiders: Russian elections are multi-layered. When dominance of Putin and his party is threatened, then the state will employ everything it's power. But within his own party, and on many local levels, there's also a lot of competition — and there, elections can be much less fraudulent. So, those local crooks can't rely on repressive apparatus of the whole state, and have to revert to political technologies and tricks which are usually used in developed democracies.
Boris Vishnevsky, as many other candidates (including my own father) are being elected not through centralised party lists, but through single-mandate districts. (I think it's similar to UK electorate system). And while United Russia (Putin's party) total numbers over the whole country will be very tightly controlled, results of those district-based elections are, in general, much more honest.
Anyway, a recent anekdot from Russian democracy illustrating why the ruling power is so obstructing oppositional candidates. A mayor of small town to make elections legally democratic, ie to have at least 2 candidates while of course not allowing any real oppositional candidates, ran his office janitor woman against himself. The people voted for the janitor.
Do 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.
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, which most people aren't.
If I were United Russia I’d make sure there were no party names or logos on the ballots. Also randomize the order of candidates between ballots so word couldn’t get out saying “it’s the middle Boris”.
Of course we have, and not only party, but a short summary of candidate achievements, place of work etc. So the trick may work only for a very busy people, not looking closely what they’re voting for.
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.
Not really; this kind of stuff has been around since early 90s, and especially prominent in local elections (where many voters are often not familiar with the candidates on the ballot).
Organized fraud is still as endemic as always, but it still needs to be whitewashed, so every little bit helps. Same reason why they herd people at workplaces to vote - a 100% fraudulent system would just conjure turnout from thin air as needed.
They are completely rigged at all levels. Here, however, every single small region votes for his own candidate, so it is not enough to "tweak" votes a bit at local level, then at aggregate, then statewide. E.g. only 1 level of rigging works, so effect is much smaller.
Despite a lot of propaganda, our elections are actually better organized with every year. Haters gonna hate, but not so many countries provide 24/7 recording webcams that allows to catch and put in jail fraudsters. A lot is made to prevent fraud, and specifically to mitigate the tactics with dopplegangers, our ballots have not only photos and names of candidates, ut a short summary of their career, place of work etc, so it’s pretty hard to vote for the wrong persone if you’re paying any attention.
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 (again, fake opposition floods the screen time)
5. Politics on the ground (fake protest leaders, informers, provocateurs, rabble rousers sent to party meetings, fake opposition canvassers)
6. Fake party politics (fake opposition parties, genuine opposition being infiltrated, and packed full of informers, saboteurs, and etc, recruitment of turncoats)
7. Fake voters (obvious cases of people hired to vote under others' IDs, but also faked voter registration, and tallies. That's how tiny villages near arctic circle suddenly get hundreds of thousands registered voters out of nowhere)
8. Fake ballots (no explanation needed, but this also includes 20000% turnouts in mail ballot, or voting in embassies abroad)
9. Fake census data (to gerrymander, to manipulate turnout numbers, and to avoid second rounds, or minimal turnout limits in regions)
10. Fake elections (some times they don't take place at all, and people come to face a closed door, or they take place, and then they claim that they didn't happen! And then, they throw away the ballots.)
11. Fake ballot counting (well, it's the most conventional faking, but even there, there is an "innovation" — fake electoral commissions. A real one given a boot under gunpoint, and fake one comes, and stages everything.)
12. Media coverage of elections (the famous 146% Putin victory in Rostov)
13. Court system (a court claims to issue a fake recount order, but actually not issuing any orders, or a fake opposition candidate claiming to sue the incumbent candidate, or electoral comission, while not really doing so, or just blatantly claiming, that the white is black, and the ballot count was fair.)
14. Fake post-election protests (to steer people away from real ones)
15. Fake statistics (when the dust settles, alleged math geniuses, and statistics PhDs are invited to draw digits, and explain how a 146% vote victory is statistically possible)
A few percents of Russia's population are employed every 4 years in this circus, just like during USSR's CPSU elections where election fakers were indoctrinated into "a deep sense of higher purpose" doing so. Small people are comforted by letting them feel themselves being "big men," and "doing stuff big boys do," if just for a few days, and at the expense of the rest of country's population.
Nah, US election riggers are significantly better at subtlety (or care enough to bother, at least). Hence eg the ruling party (the Democratic and Republican Party) being nominally two separate political parties.
The US largely accomplishes its elections through corrupt primaries, gerrymandering, and voter suppression. Not all of this is relevant for every race - you can't gerrymander your way into the federal senate, for instance - but you can use it to get a 60% red legislature in a 52% blue state.
It looks better when the police uses violence to prevent problem people from voting, than to manufacture votes out of thin air.
A more humane solution would be NASCAR-style jumpsuits, worn by law for all government business, emblazoned with logos of their moneyed sponsors. "Ah, there's my guy, he's the one beholden to land developers."
Of course, I'm not sure how that'd work in Russia. I assume at least some of the criminal masterminds who fill the role of the West's owner class have a, like, inkan [0] or something.
The Rhinoceros Party did this in Canada, in the 80s. They found a guy named "John Turner" to run against the prime minister of the same name, in the same riding. Funny stuff!
This example is extremely egregious - can anyone fact check on those identical names and very similar pictures? Other commenters have posted American examples as well, which while blatant are not nearly as egregious as the Russian example. Just goes to show, true democracy is hard to enact.
I think arguing about Putin's level of control over Russia is splitting dissidents, I mean hairs. The ability to openly murder and gaslight your opponents, even when they are in other countries, is certainly within tolerances for an "actual totalitarian dictatorship"; Putin has, and flaunts, this ability. Is he publicly directing uniformed thugs to kick down doors and execute people in the streets? Well, no, but not being able to recognize Putin's Russia as a savvy, modern, post-truth translation of that classic dictatorship pattern will be met with me rolling my eyes (and then my whole body, along with some 9mm bullets, out of an upper-storey window, which will be ruled a suicide).
"Totalitarian" implies total control - i.e. yes, the ability to direct uniform thugs to kick down doors and execute people in the streets is included in it.
Putin's Russia is authoritarian, not totalitarian. That's why political opponents are murdered by assassins, not executed by firing squads.
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 often held by autocrats // check
- propaganda is broadcast by state-controlled mass media in order to control the citizenry // check
So the only thing missing is "private life", where I simply can't claim it because I don't understand the requirement.
Not all opposition parties are prohibited. there are more parties in Russian parliament(6) than in US congress(2). Even after this year elections there will probably be 3+ parties in parliament.
> outlaws individual opposition to the state
it's not really outlawed still, but yes, we are very close to it
>extremely high degree of control over public life
no. There are very chaotic attempts to control public life, but they are not very systemic.
> political power is often held by autocrats
This sentence is like "democracy is when political power is held by democrats"
> propaganda is broadcast by state-controlled mass media in
order to control the citizenry
De-facto they are all prohibited, as rigged elections means their vote in the parliament has no bearing.
> it's not really outlawed still, but yes, we are very close to it
They just did exactly that by making Navalny's org "terrorist" thereby outlawing all individual supporters. And before that by banning underspecified forms of critique in the Internet.
> they are not very systemic
Mandatory religious education (with barely accessible opt-out). Outlawing specific groups from advocating their political views (like "gay propaganda"). This is a very "systemic" pushing of certain values by authoritarian means. If you do not consider it "systemic", please, define "systemic".
> This sentence is like "democracy is when political power is held by democrats"
It does not matter what it is like. We are doing a "totalitarianism" test and this checks.
> check for every country in the world
No, it is not. Most of Russian mass-media is owned directly or indirectly by the government. The ones that are not owned are heavily censored. In the rest of the world many governments do not own or censor media. For instance, US government owns just a handful of media companies, which are not that popular in the US.
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 some sort of an activist or a state employee. Meaning, regular people are generally left to be, can de-facto and de-jure think and say whatever they wish, and they only get messed with if they are in the way of power or in position of power.
Totalitarian regimes resemble cults, authoritarian regimes resemble corporations (and many corporations are, in fact, authoritarian).
A regime can be authoritarian, but not totalitarian (think Principate Rome) and in some case can be totalitarian, but not authoritarian (think a democracy ran by fanatical Puritans)
This is all great, but let's stick to definitions when discussing if a country matches one or not. Either disagree with the definition and give your alternative, or disagree with checkpoints in the current one.
Let’s. As outlined above, totalitarian regimes strive to control your private life while authoritarian regimes generally do not. Since you wrote that the difference is unclear to you, I thought I’d explain it.
Sure, but for a society to be "totalitarian" is an asymptotic climb, not a defined goal. An independent Russian businessman might find himself approached by the local mob (under the aegis of an oligarch, who is under the aegis of the Russian state) to acquire a share of his business. He can't turn to any authority for help, and if he refuses his business (or he) will be crippled. That's not total control.
Political opponents are murdered by assassins, and domestic coverage of the murder makes no bones about what happened, nor is the even truthier international coverage suppressed at all. Public execution by implication. I'm certain Putin has the functional ability to quietly kill someone; he was in the KGB. Most of the big assassinations read more like expansive threats: "look what I can get away with, and the West just wags a stern finger at me; you are not safe, enemy of mine, even in the UK".
I appreciate that words usually have fairly fixed definitions (but sometimes not so literally, aha). That said, while Putin's Russia may not be totalitarian to the standards of, say, Maoist China, I think it's pretty damn difficult, and moreso than in most other countries, to do anything that the ruling class doesn't want done. That approaches total control.
Russian businessmen being approached by the local mob was more common back in 90s (that much I know from experience, because my parents ran a small business back then, and had to deal with all that). But the country as a whole was less authoritarian than it is today.
As far as doing something that the ruling class doesn't want done - if you mean politically, there are plenty of comparable countries, such as Singapore, that are similarly considered authoritarian but not totalitarian. Totalitarianism normally means total control (or at least the possibility of it) - not just of political participation, but of all spheres of life. Russia may turn totalitarian yet - there are certainly plenty of ideologues advocating it - but it hasn't crossed that line so far.
And yes, of course it's all a spectrum. Totalitarianism itself is a small subset of the much wider authoritarian spectrum.
One of Putin's defining characteristics is that he does not leave things to chance. Why wouldn't he use every tool and trick available to him in order to secure his grip on power?
Maybe 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 Communist KPRF have apparently spooked the government and nominating doppelgängers can siphon off precious votes in close contests.
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 candidates.
You absolutely can change patronymics, that's how lot's of Mikhailovich's and Arkadievich's became Moishevich's and Abramovich's in the 90ies after the collapse of the USSR.
That's interesting - wouldn't that be because the actual fathers changed their names in those cases back to the non-Russianized versions (Moishe/Mikhail) when e.g. emigrating to Israel when that ceased to be forbidden?
But in any case, those particular candidates had their names and surnames changed but for whatever reason their patronymics were left intact.
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.
Oh, two nearly identical doppelgangers, with matching appearance, age and name?
I wouldn't hesitate to follow great old russian tradition and take a loan. A few million rubles in cash here and there from those shady and unscrupulous lenders, then miss a payment or two and see what happens! A completely legal way to remind those people that Russia isn't European country yet. Nor Saint Petersburg is Miami.
True enough. Saint Petersburg has a fantastic history, brought us some of the most important writers in history and is full of theatres, palaces and one of the best museums in the world. It's also very beautiful.
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 is pretty similar to Ross Perot splitting the republican vote in the U.S. '92 election except that Perot and Bush should have been political allies and instead split the vote in favor of Clinton. I can't think of an example of using this against an opponent as described in the article could certainly be used here (though I suspect using duplicate names) would be harder to hide).
> using this against an opponent as described in the article could certainly be used here
It's called a "spoiler" and they don't necessarily have to have the same or similar names to be effective, in fact, a similar tactic was used here less than a year ago:
I'm sure you didn't intend this, but your comment is strongly reminiscent of this classic Russian political tactic for dealing with criticism from the west: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
HN tends to have waves of (for lack of a better term) "troll hunters" who come here with an attitude that everyone here is commenting in bad faith and must be called out for it. They will do it to commenters from all sides of an argument, even in cases like this where it was clear your comment was simply remembering a past event and not intended to be anything else.
I haven't figured out if they mean well and are just sorely misguided, or are actually trolls themselves here from places like Reddit where such bad faith activity actually happens in every single post.
I'm not in it for the karma and don't worry about being down-voted when I'm writing a thoughtful but perhaps contrary comment. Sometimes (like now) it teaches me that I'm out of step with the "mood" of the commons. That's fine too.
Recognizing a somewhat similar incident from one's own country's history is not at all "whataboutism", especially when there was no obvious intent to diminish the impact of the original subject or otherwise distract from it. Not every comment on a web forum is an attempt to argue or act in bad faith.
You're right of course, at the time of writing there were only 2 comments in this thread, and both were along the same lines which made the effect seem more pronounced.
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...