"In the United States, previous elections were falsified through postal voting ... they bought ballots for $10, filled them out, and threw them into mailboxes without any supervision from observers, and that's it," Putin said, without providing evidence. Putin's opponents say the March election in Russia is no real contest as the president wields unchallenged power and his main rival, Alexei Navalny, is serving more than 30 years in jail on charges that Navalny says were trumped up. They say the use of electronic voting creates scope for authorities to manipulate the vote in Putin's favour without detection.

(Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, running for a new six-year term in an election that his opponents say is a parody of democracy, said on Tuesday that past U.S. elections had been rigged by postal voting.

“In the United States, previous elections were falsified through postal voting … they bought ballots for $10, filled them out, and threw them into mailboxes without any supervision from observers, and that’s it,” Putin said, without providing evidence.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    3·
    10 months ago

    Valid ballots have signatures matching the registered voter casting the ballot.

    In Putin’s scenario, there are no signatures, the ballots are not associated with registered voters, and as such would be rejected at the polling location.

    • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
      2·
      10 months ago

      That is not involved in the supervision of filling them out nor posting them. Both those things happen before or after, not during.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.worldMEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        Nobody supervises the filling out of ballots, that’s an entirely private matter.

        The only supervision that happens is the comparing of signatures and that happens both at in person and vote by mail voting.