(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.

    • gibmiser@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Why would putin lie about such a thing? I’m going to blindly believe him since it confirms my existing beliefs.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          10 months ago

          I don’t know, technically killing your opponents isn’t really rigging the election.

          Rigging an election is something subtle, and Putin doesn’t really do subtle. They don’t even bother to make their murders look like accidents anymore.

    • jas0n@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      This 100%. The Russian propaganda to right wing talking heads pipeline is just so painfully obvious.

  • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Elections have been rigged for a long, long time. Gerrymandering is absolutely insane. Cities with meandering sections cut off. Disadvantaged suburbs slammed into afluent areas across town to dilute the votes.

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      But not rigged in the way Putin and the Republicans claim. Rigged in ways that help them.

      • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Just like all the claims the GOP makes now. If they claim we’re doing something it’s because they’re doing it.

        Not. To say that there’s not Democratic gerrymandering as well, but when 80% of it leans red that 20% blue is more of a defensive posture than anything.

    • remotelove@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      You could also have any political opponents thrown in jail or wait for them to fall out of a window. You don’t need to tamper with the system that way.

    • fidodo@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Rigged overlaps too much with the votes being fake. I think unjust and inequitable are better terms.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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    10 months ago

    “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,”

    Problem - That’s not the way vote by mail works.

    1. You register to vote and place a signature on file.

    2. You get your ballot in the mail and vote.

    3. You put the ballot in the mailing envelope and sign the back of the envelope.

    4. When the ballot is returned, they compare the signature on the envelope with the signature on file, if it matches, the ballot is set aside for counting.

    5. If there’s a PROBLEM:

    A) Missing signature
    B) Signature doesn’t match
    C) Ballot damaged or unreadable
    D) Ballot already recorded as present

    The ballot gets returned to the voter for correction, assuming there’s enough time for it to be corrected.

    What Putin describes wouldn’t work, because the fake ballots either wouldn’t have a signature, wouldn’t have a valid signature, or wouldn’t correspond to a registered voter.

      • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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        10 months ago

        You know how the Nigerian prince scams intentionally use terrible English to filter out the stupid ones?

        Half the people you come across are below average. Technology has made it exceptionally effective to target the dumb and vulnerable.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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        10 months ago

        The supervision is the signature comparison, just like in person voting where you’d go in, sign the register, and they’d compare that signature to the one on file.

        • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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          10 months ago

          “filled them out, and threw them into mailboxes without any supervision from observers” Where does that suggest it is the signature involved? The signature is compared before Voting when Voting in person and after the office receives it when Voting by Mail. It makes no sense that lil’ dictator pootie meant the signature in his statement.

          • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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            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
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              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.worldM
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                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.

    • DrRatso@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      I fail to see why it would not work though? Instead of paying 10$ for an empty ballot from a registered voter you pay 10$ for an empty ballot from a registered voter and and their signed envelope?

      Like I am not saying this happened, because 10$ ballot sales would probably have made the news around the election, I doubt 10$ buys silence. But like I fail to see how this is impossible?

        • DrRatso@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          Of course, that was my point with 10$ doesn’t buy silence. Top comment simply seemed to imply that buying blank mail-in ballots is impossible which for sure doesn’t seem to be. I could even see some nut at least trying to buying say 5-10, but ironically I think a Trump supporter is more likely to try to pull this.

          • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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            10 months ago

            Obtaining blank ballots isn’t the trick, it’s obtaining blank ballots attached to valid, registered voters with a signature on file and matching the signature.

            You’d have to do that by the thousands to flip an election and it would only take one person going “I already voted? What do you mean I already voted?” to rumble it.

            Even if we just counted ballots with no verification, which we don’t, you’d end up with overcounts which we know did not happen. “Hey, this county only has 5,000 registered voters, how did we get 30,000 ballots?”

            • DrRatso@lemmy.ml
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              10 months ago

              The point is you offer someone who registered for mail in to simply sell you their ballot along with a signed envelope. I would vager doing this for a few votes would be fairly easy. Certainly plenty of poor voters would easily sell a vote. Idk about 10, but for 20-50 bucks? For sure. I would imagine someone selling a vote would be less likely to come forward in some respect too, so if you target the right people, at some minor scale you would even get away with it no problem.

              Yes this is obviously not happening, not at scale anyway, and certainly not enough to flip the election. But the idea that this is particularly hard in itself, let alone impossible, is absurd.

              • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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                10 months ago

                Oh, yeah, small scale voting fraud has always been a thing.

                When we first set up vote by mail 23 years ago, Republican operatives got the bright idea to set up fake ballot drop off locations. The idea was go to Democratic heavy areas, collect the ballots, then just throw them away.

                They were arrested. LOL.

                Last election cycle there were multiple reports of people doing double voting for family members, they also got caught.

                So when small scale stuff like this gets exposed and prosecuted, the idea that fraud on a scale big enough to turn an election would go un-noticed is just laughable.

    • nexguy@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Just like Trump lies, Putin requires that there be no evidence to support his claims. Imagine if Trump actually tried to prove his claims with evidence… it would fail. Even if one ended up true that would be worse as then people would expect him to prove things with evidence in the future.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Pot calling Kettle black, but he ain’t even wrong.

      Not even getting into the Brooks Brothers Riots or Operation Eagle Eye or the straight explicit rigging of Jim Crow, the modern political class fully endorses rigging elections

      Putin knows the US elections can be rigged because he’s had his hands on the levers of power. But he’s hardly unique in that regard. Certainly, not given how we’ve eviscerated the Voting Rights Act over the last twenty years.

      • Fades@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Yes he IS wrong, what the fuck???

        The brooks brothers riots had nothing to do with mail in voting, neither did any of the other examples you gave. If you’re going to say he’s right you need to qualify that since he specifically stated postal voting as the medium for rigging.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          The brooks brothers riots had nothing to do with mail in voting

          They very explicitly stopped a district from counting mailed in absentee ballots.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        10 months ago

        Right so why doesn’t he provide proof then? He’s absolutely motivated to provide it if he has it so the fact that he doesn’t have it basically proves he just making stuff up.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Right so why doesn’t he provide proof then?

          I cited multiple examples with ample proof behind them.

          Are you denying the Brooks Brothers Riot and Operation Eagle Eye happened? Or are you just upset that Putin isn’t enumerating them from his bully pulpit?

          • BobGnarley@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            Lol see, this dude had facts to back up his claim but because what he said was something people dont want to hear he gets downvoted to zero. I notice that a lot on here. It’s part of the sewer that leaked over from Reddit.

            • Fades@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              Or maybe they simply worded their comment poorly. Yeah we have had elections stolen before but Putin is NOT right in stating that it was by way of mail in voting. Absolute bullshit on that.

              • beardown@lemm.ee
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                10 months ago

                we have had elections stolen before

                Pretty gross how it took so long for you to admit this. Especially since this point is the entire essence of the article.

                If you agree that American elections have previously been stolen then why are you disagreeing so emotionally with the post? If you admit that US democracy is a sham then why are you yelling at Putin rather than yelling at your own country’s lack of human rights?

  • Landmammals@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    So weird that Trump and Putin have the exact same opinions. Do you think Trump is controlling Putin?

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    10 months ago

    And he wouldn’t lie would he. Internationally known as being a reasonable person that he is.

    God, what a stupid article, why the hell was this even reported? Oh never mind it’s Yahoo news, that’s why

  • zik@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I mean he should know since he was one of the people paying to influence the election.

  • iAvicenna@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    phew I thought Russian elections were rigged too, glad to hear that is not the case, what a real relief

  • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Rhetoric of this sort just promotes distrust in election systems, which of course prompts demagogues like Trump to promise voters they can fix it if they gain power. The fun thing here is that the right here needs you to believe things that aren’t true in order to justify them doing a coup, the stupid thing is that stupid people take this kind of talk seriously.

    But seriously, American voting is relatively secure- it’s just that where lawmakers don’t want voters deciding the ‘wrong’ way they’ve gerrymandered them into districts to prevent them doing it, and they’ve done things to strip voters of their voting rights and to suppress voting and to make it inconvenient or difficult to vote. This has been a bipartisan thing in the past, but today the GOP are the chief offenders.

    Also, Putin’s Russia is in the stage of democracy where elections are an exercise in flaunting the death of democracy itself, and nobody should ever take his talk about elections as being in good faith, ever

    • fidodo@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      There’s plenty of injustice in our voting system but it’s all out in the open. Seriously, why go through the tremendous amount of risk and effort needed to fake votes when there are plenty of ways to sway the election in broad daylight?

  • teamevil@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Protecting bitch, Putin rigs Russian elections and tried to rig ours again but failed. Fuck him