Russia’s elections commission has said it found “dead souls” among the more than 100,000 signatures of support submitted by Boris Nadezhdin, the sole anti-war candidate in next month’s presidential election, in a sign that he could be disqualified from a carefully managed ballot meant to deliver victory for Vladimir Putin.
Nadezhdin, a veteran politician who has associated with Kremlin insiders and the opposition to Putin, has been waging a last-minute campaign to get on the ballot for the election, with thousands of Russians standing for hours in the freezing cold to add their signature in his support.
While Nadezhdin has not yet been disqualified, Friday’s briefing at the central elections commission indicated that he could be removed in the run-up to the vote. He has been summoned to the commission on Monday for a review of the “errors” among his signatures.
“you have error in documents”
“What would that be?”
“In field ‘name’ is not ‘Vladimir Putin’. Grave error in documents, we cannot accept”
“There’s dead man’s signatures on this paper”
“What do you mean? They’re all standing right here in front of you”
bang bang bang
“See? Three dead man’s signatures”
I was seriously wondering how many conscripts might have signed before getting killed in Ukraine.
Wouldn’t it be strange to require 100,000 signatures and stop exactly at that number? I feel like they’re just buying time with this tactic.
He needs 100k signatures, but can file only 105k signatures.
Was the error that he filed the paperwork to run as president?
Nah, he failed to fall out of a window.
Some of the names that support him are apparently from dead people.
Unclear whether they were dead before Putin’s people identified them.
this will not be a surprise for Nadezhdin and his team… i’m sure they have been expecting this fight from the beginning, although they didn’t expect to have as much support behind them going into it…
A minor correction: His guys brought the max of 105 000 (from 200k+) signatures and the margin of error is set to 5%. Izbirkom spoke about two candidates at that time when they summoned them. Earlier a state official incorrectly stated that the ballot of 5 signatures can’t be brought with just one. Also, Izbirkom is said to use LLM to detect fake signatures lmao.
Yet, they can make up everything and has all tools to do so. I’m just curious what would they pick. And a brief wind of hope they wouldn’t be able to, just for the sake of legitimization since that guy in the world news.
Yeah let’s start with a fact that 105000 signatures limit sucks so bad :D
And 2,5k limit per subject of Russian Federation meaning you need loads of money to collect them in every region or republic. This garden is walled just like a Gulag. It’s surprising he got them with all these barriers.
What also makes me wonder is that Putin has a thing for running independent meaning he needs 300k. And there were many photoes of his signing posts remaining vacant. Still, no doubt he’d get there.
Nah I even believe Putin can genuinely get 300.000 signatures. Unlike other candidates, he’s already known to everyone in Russia (meaning 0,2% active support is enough), and sure as hell the signatures will be accepted.
What he means is if Putin got 300k signatures there would be much longer lines to sign for Putin than for Nadezhdin. But there wen’t any.
There were way more points installed to vote for Putin than for Nadezhdin (the latter literally has one point for entire Saint Petersburg afaik). I’ve seen people signing for Putin, didn’t count the numbers, though.
Won’t doubt or argue, since I can’t tell your lie from your truth on the internet. My observations were different. But in the end it doesn’t matter.
Because Putin has all his state workers and clients to vote. Schools, prisons, psych wards, police, municipal bodies. There’s something like 3-5kk of cops, rosgvardia, siloviky. Even if no one would visit public bins, they’d make the bank.
My amusement is caused by his relentless want to run as an independent and get this 300k. I think he has some thing for feeling he’s supported by his loyal people and measures the work of his governors by who brings more to the table.
Sure budget workers would be pressed to leave those if there would not be enough, and Putin’s gonna get his way anyway.
I think running this way makes his power appear more legitimate to some people, which is why he does this. Just one more minor point in his hold on power that doesn’t cost him much.
What an earth do these people think is going on? Does he think Russia is an actual democracy and that he stands even a remote chance of not only winning, but being allowed on the ballot?
If this guy actually turns up to this meeting on Monday there’s a 95% probability he’s going to be dead by the end of the day. I hope he knows that.
I don’t think he’ll be dead, rather the Kremlin’s actions regarding him suggest they see him as useful. Nadezhdin gets a lot of help from Russian state-sponsored media in getting his name out there. And while he is seemingly willing to criticize Putin and even score some rhetorical hits, he’s also an official politician who can probably be controlled if necessary. I’m not sure whether he’s a witting part of it or not, but I think Putin wants to keep him around to manage the opposition. The legit opposition may also realize this but may support him anyway because they have no other hope.
