ELECTRONIC VOTING
Andreichuk said electronic voting – available for the first time in a presidential election to people in about a third of the country – was a particular concern because it was open to manipulation and the results were impossible to check.
The spread of voting across three days raised the possibility that ballot boxes could be tampered with overnight, he said.
Andreichuk also noted there were only three alternative candidates to Putin, the fewest he has faced in any of his five elections, and said no open public discussion of the country’s problems had been allowed to take place.
“Censorship has been introduced, there’s repression in the country, part of the opposition is behind bars. So these elections are just unfree and undemocratic from the start.”
Golos is not allowed to send observers. It was first labelled a “foreign agent” in 2013, having angered the authorities by publishing evidence of fraud in a 2011 parliamentary vote and a 2012 presidential election won by Putin.
Another of the organisation’s leaders, Grigory Melkonyants, was arrested last August and accused of involvement with an “undesirable” organisation. He is still in prison, awaiting trial.
Source: CNA
