All Signs Point to Runaway Election Fraud in Russia

(Newser) – The bad news just keeps rolling in for Pooty-Poot: The Wall Street Journal took a long, hard look at Russia's Dec. 4 elections and finds solid indicators of major, widespread, in-your-face fraud—by one measure, casting doubt on some 14 million of the 65.7 million votes purportedly cast. Seems Vladimir Putin's United Russia did astoundingly well in precincts where voter turnout was way above the national average, a metric that the Journal notes doesn't prove ballot-stuffing outright, but "provides the first overall picture" that it "could be broad in scale."

"These are sometimes called the fingerprints of fraud," says a professor of political science. "If they all point in the same direction, that's a very strong case." The Journal pored over results from all 95,228 precincts using a computer program it designed, and found statistically unlikely round numbers and high percentages of turnout in many—23,202 precincts reported turnout of more than 80%, compared to the national average of 60.2%, and United Russia scored 77% of the vote in those, far above the 49.3% it claimed nationwide. Of note, Chechnya, which has long rebelled against the Kremlin and Putin, had turnout and support for United Russia to the tune of 99% in the majority of its precincts. "I've never seen anything like that before," marveled another political scientist.