explainers

Russia’s elections weren’t always this dishonest. Here’s how the system broke down and why voting can still expose fraud.

Source: Meduza

Russians will vote for members of the State Duma from September 18 to 20. The authorities are counting on a solid — though not triumphant — victory; the opposition is both uniting and quarreling as it searches for the best protest-voting strategy; and many potential voters are growing more skeptical about the whole idea of showing up at a polling station or using the remote electronic voting system, since the results will be “faked” anyway. How reasonable is that view? Are elections in Russia really illegitimate from the outset? Which ones were the most dishonest? And how do you find the motivation to take part when you know everything has already been decided? Meduza put these and other questions about electoral fraud to a veteran researcher of Russian elections. (We cannot disclose the expert’s name for security reasons, but we have full confidence in his expertise.)

How do we know that elections in Russia are illegitimate?

If you take legitimacy to mean compliance with the law, then monitoring at practically every major election shows the problem is systemic. And the departures from the rules happen at all sorts of levels — from the rooms where election commissions work all the way up to federal law.

Public monitoring projects — such as the “Map of Violations” run by the Golos movement — usually document violations mainly at the precinct commissions. Observers, meanwhile, show that the higher-level commissions have no interest in following the law either. And the lawyers who challenge violations regularly find problems in the regulations themselves. The way the system responds tells you what its priorities and goals are.

Ideally, commission rulings and legislation would address the problems identified. Instead, they almost always just create new ones.

The authorities’ approach essentially boils down to this: we’ll ban everything and make it physically impossible to monitor the elections. Rather than saying: We have nothing to hide. Let anyone observe, and keep voting to a single day.

How the system responds to violations is the single best measure of legitimacy. As a rule, investigative agencies forward criminal complaints to the election commissions, and the commissions simply take the word of the very people the observer is accusing.

What matters is precisely how the system closes itself off in response to violations. In 2018, during the gubernatorial election in Primorye, observers discovered that 13 tally sheets — the official precinct results documents that led the Central Election Commission to recommend annulling the results — had not in fact been lost in a fire, as the official account claimed, but had been entered into the Vybory state automated system. Anyone could see on the commission’s website that the tally sheets existed; they had simply been hidden. It became obvious that the commission was lying. And the response? That same day, the commission’s website removed the ability to view the history of tally sheets entered into the system.

There is statistical evidence of fraud as well. Observers with the volunteer project Peresmotr drew attention to a provision of Federal Law No. 67 under which an election must be declared invalid if it was invalid at precincts accounting for at least 25% of the voters who cast ballots. Checking for fraud using recordings of the official video broadcast of the 2021 State Duma elections (Meduza covered the analysis of that footage in detail), the volunteers confirmed that the violations affected more than 25% of voters — meaning the elections should have been declared invalid. That, of course, did not happen, because election commissions at every level don’t follow the law.

Territorial commissions often go further, helping people committing violations in the precincts by ignoring observers’ reports. In effect, the system of election commissions operates as one large criminal organization.

Electoral statistics add to what observers see. Spikes at round numbers in turnout or results (you can read more about these anomalies in this Meduza piece) show that, at every federal election, the results are fabricated as if by calculator. The most recent Russian presidential election was no exception.

Has Russia ever counted votes honestly?

Elections were not always as dishonest as they have been in the last few electoral cycles. The slide to today’s situation was gradual. As an article on the Golos website points out, for instance, the results of the 2000 election were counted relatively honestly. But things got worse year by year. By 2004, observers were already documenting the “calculator” fabrication described above, and from 2007 onward, vote distributions took on a comet-like shape with a pronounced tail indicating ballot stuffing.

Even now, results are sometimes counted without heavy fraud. Five years ago in the Khabarovsk region, for example, United Russia took a modest 25% — a figure close to its real level of support. Assessing the 2018 elections, experts writing for Meduza identified as many as 12 relatively honest regions.

It’s worth remembering that counting the votes takes only a few hours, while an election campaign lasts months. So this is entirely possible: an honest count but a dishonest, predetermined result.

Observers at the polling stations see this most clearly. They make fraud harder, but they often note that a majority of voters really do vote for Putin. A Putin who has been spared any real competitors, since those were kept off the ballot on contrived grounds. When election commissions and courts decide who will be on the ballot, it’s important to remember that dishonest elections begin at exactly that stage, which is invisible to voters on election day.

Russians lost real elections a long ago. But you’ve still got a choice. If you live outside Russia, please donate to Meduza — for yourself or for those who remain inside the country and want to read independent news.

Is it possible to say which elections were the most dishonest?

For a long time it was Dmitry Medvedev’s election, with its enormous tail of ballot stuffing and plenty of other evidence pointing to “faked” results. The vote on the constitutional amendments later broke that record. Election analyst Sergey Shpilkin estimated that about 20 million “yes” votes were added. But even the “voting on tree stumps” — a nickname earned when ballot boxes were set up outdoors on stumps — was eclipsed by Putin’s 2024 election, with an anomalous 22 million excess votes cast for him. So far that’s the record.

My guess is that we could set a new record this year. Removing Yabloko — a party that, according to pollsters, was on track for a double-digit result — from the ballot deprives millions of people of their preferred choice.

Which kinds of fraud are the most common? Ballot stuffing? Remote voting? Something else?

The people committing the fraud seem to have learned the saying about not putting all your eggs in one basket. There’s no single method. Often several techniques are used at a single election. In the Primorye vote mentioned above, three types of fraud were used at once: paper tally sheets were rewritten, the results of tally sheets already entered were hidden, and results were changed after they had been entered into the Vybory system.

Today the whole toolkit is in use: ballot stuffing during home visits, ballot stuffing into the sealed bags that hold votes overnight, supervised voting through the online system, precinct tallies faked by several different methods, those tallies rewritten at territorial election commissions, and tallies deleted from Vybory, the state election database. The list goes on.

If you had to pick just one, it’s ballot stuffing, of course. And it has gotten smarter. Three-day voting is far more convenient for those committing fraud: ballots can be stuffed into a tamper-evident bag overnight, and then observers can be kept from finding out. If the observer pushes back and insists on documenting the violation, people give false testimony against them, and the court removes them, supposedly for interfering with the commission’s work.

Is it possible for Russians to fight electoral fraud at all, or is it totally pointless?

You can always fight. It will not be very effective, which makes the work of election observers all the more heroic. But be prepared: it is precisely in fighting the people who falsify results that you come to understand just how bad Russia’s elections have become. Dealing with investigative agencies, the courts, and the election commissions above the one committing the fraud, you will most likely see that not one of them has any interest in upholding the law.

When you learn that through personal experience, it strengthens your convictions. In any case, in my view, standing by while our country’s electoral system is destroyed is clearly not an option.

Is there any doubt that the 2026 elections will be stolen from Russians?

Sadly, almost none. The theft began several months ago, when the authorities started removing candidates they considered undesirable from the race, especially those from the pro-peace Yabloko party. And these violations are happening right now; we see them in the news every day. So the theft is already underway. And remember the “innovations” listed above that make life easier for those committing fraud — from three-day voting and the closing off of video recordings from polling stations to the expansion of early voting and remote electronic voting.

What’s the point of participating in an election that will be stolen?

The election will be stolen — but not your vote. Casting that vote gives you a way to challenge the crooks at polling stations and tell people around you about violations. If, for example, you take your ballot away instead of casting it and later see that your precinct’s tally does not account for it, you have effectively uncovered fraud.

Elections still create a space for people in Russia to talk about something that matters to them. And because not all votes are stolen, we can still get at least local violations corrected.

One important point: the laws still partly work. When observers take on the election commissions, they are still relying on the rules as they exist. And commissions are required to respond to such complaints (as a rule, they even meet the procedural deadlines!). So there is, at a minimum, a point in shining a light on the cheating.

Here’s an example. The Central Election Commission’s ruling on video surveillance states that video must be provided on request if an observer who was present at the count has filed a complaint against the precinct commission. Yes, they will refuse requests from people who don’t know this. But if you filed a complaint, were present at the count, filled out the application correctly, and sent it to your regional commission, the chances of a refusal are already very small. With proper preparation, you can break through that wall of automatic refusals and either obtain evidence of fraud or at least expose the election-commission establishment’s hypocrisy.

Another reason to take part is that the more authorities’ opponents vote, the harder it is to falsify the results. If you showed up on Sunday and voted, your vote is harder to fake than if you had stayed home. Falsification is a complicated process, and it always leaves traces.

Video from polling stations is now available to practically no one, but recordings of these crimes will be stored on servers for a full year. Candidates’ observers can file complaints en masse (to obtain the clips showing violations) and then publish either the footage or the refusals to hand it over.

What’s the better way to vote to prevent fraud: in person or online?

The best option is in person, on Sunday evening, at the precinct where you are also serving as an observer. But not everyone is able to observe, so my advice is a paper ballot. It’s more reliable. Remote electronic voting was introduced this year mainly in regions where the level of fraud is below average, so the probability of your vote being stolen online is most likely higher than at a polling station.

One more thing: an important change in 2026 is that even if you signed up for remote electronic voting and didn’t manage to withdraw that application through the Gosuslugi state services portal, you can still vote at your precinct. If you were forced to register for online voting, it’s still better to go to the precinct. The commission will have to check that you did not receive an electronic ballot, strike you from the remote voting list, and add you to a supplementary list at the precinct. We don’t know, though, whether every commission in all 32 regions covered by federal remote electronic voting will be equipped with computers connected to the system.