Gaming For 'Love Of Fatherland' As Russia Votes

By Christopher Miller

MOSCOW -- You’re a low-level Russian public servant who is entrusted on the eve of elections to ensure a high voter turnout within your constituency. Success could mean a promotion; failure could cost you your job.

Bribing voters with cash and busing them from one polling station to another to cast multiple ballots is effective, but illegal. And in this modern age of ubiquitous smartphones and social media, election cheats risk getting caught red-handed.

Can you successfully manipulate the results in your district by ushering people to the polls without being exposed?

It's all part of a humorous new game called Day Of Silence. Election Simulator. Created by the independent Russian news site Mediazona, its premise is rooted in Putin-era history, when Russian authorities have been caught ballot-stuffing, fudging turnout figures, and transporting voters to multiple polling stations to cast several votes in a practice dubbed "carousel voting." All of that in addition to the Kremlin's increasingly tight grip on major media and crippling prosecutions that target dissenters.

But for President Vladimir Putin and his allies, voter turnout is no laughing matter.

READ MORE

From opposition leader Aleksei Navalny: "The slogan of these 'elections:' Come and we'll feed you."

Putin Expected To Sail To Fourth Term; Voter Turnout The Only Question

By RFE/RL

Voters in Russia are casting ballots in a presidential election that is all but certain to secure President Vladimir Putin a fourth term in office.

The 65-year-old incumbent is riding a wave of government-stoked popularity on the fourth anniversary of Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region and in the wake of a military intervention in Syria that has been played up on state-controlled television as a patriotic success.

The only real question is whether voters will turn out in big enough numbers to hand him a convincing mandate.

Casting his ballot in Moscow, Putin said, "I'm sure that the program which I propose for the country is right."

Voter turnout in Russia's Far East is already higher than that in 2012, reports say.

Several villages in Kamchatka and Chukotka reported voter turnout rates of 100 percent.

Polling stations opened at 8 a.m. local time in Moscow after opening hours earlier in Russia’s Far East.

They will close at 1800 GMT on March 18 in Kaliningrad, Russia's westernmost territory, with preliminary results expected shortly afterward.

The election comes as Russia's relations with Britain are highly strained over the nerve-agent poisoning in Salisbury of a former Russian spy that London blames on Moscow.

In addition, the United States on March 15 imposed yet another round of sanctions on Russian firms and individuals in connection with what Washington says was Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

These tensions, however, only bolster Putin's popular image as a defender of Russia and give credence to his assertions that Russia is surrounded by foreign enemies.

The other seven candidates in the presidential election trail far behind Putin in opinion polls, with Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin polling 7 percent and journalist Ksenia Sobchak at just 2 percent. According to the Kremlin-friendly All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion, Putin is polling 69 percent support.

READ MORE

From RFE/RL's News Desk:

Casting his ballot in Moscow, Putin said "any" result that allows him to continue as president would be a "success."

"I am sure the program I am offering is the right one," Putin was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.