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How to Steal a Presidential Election
A practical guide that’s best not to use
The only anti-war candidate, Boris Nadezhdin, has been banned from the presidential election in Russia. Everything that happened today at the Central Election Commission in Moscow resembled political theater in the genre of satire. Some elements of humor were also noticeable. Boris Nadezhdin, opponent of the war in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin, initially had no chance in the election scenario prepared by the Kremlin. However, Nadezhdin caused quite a stir in the media sphere when he managed to collect 100,000 signatures of his supporters in a few days. When the authorities saw the growing public support for Boris Nadezhdin, they decided to get rid of him immediately. The political show called “How to Steal an Election” came to an end today.
The Central Election Commission (CEC) said it had found “irregularities” in over 9,000 of more than 100,000 signatures of support submitted by Boris Nadezhdin. This number was three times higher than the allowable 5% error rate. It became grounds for the commission to disqualify him. As a result, Boris Nadezhdin was banned by Russia’s electoral authorities from running against Vladimir Putin in the carefully orchestrated presidential election in March.