The Yanks love to lecture. They love that holier then thou, you dirty mangy apes of humanity, feeling. After all, they're God's gift to humanity, and yet they do actually call themselves that and believe it all, and it is their lot in life, nah, their mission, to teach all us stupid savages how to live and work and police ourselves, even if they have to kill half a nation to do it. Its for our own good see.
So, while the Yank press is busy running one worthless splat of self righteous gibberish after another, about our elections or system of elections, I, dear readers, figured we should do a small comparison on the parliamentary election system of the two nations:
To begin with:
Number of parties running: 7 parties in every oblast (province/state) of our nation.
US? A normal load of 2, with an occasional local third or ever so rare fourth. Between the One Party Two Branch system of America, those two, basically the same groups control over 98% of the parliament.
Day of Elections: Sunday in Russia, so everyone can make the polls. In America? A work day and most employers do not give their workers times to get to the polls, so you have to do it on your own time. The whole point is to discourage any but the die hards: the fanatics or those without jobs, whose votes are already bought. If you can get bad weather its even better.
Places of Vote: Russia: government centers, hotels, schools, shopping centers, anywhere where it is convenient to get to. In the US it is usually done at a fire house, or a school or some other municipal building. Some what convenient but not overly. In the US the lines are outside, under the elements, and hours long. Voters wait up to three or four hours on their time to vote, so turn out is always very low.
Where to Vote: Everyone is assigned, in Russia, by their district. However, if that person happens to be outside of his district, such as on a business trip, he can call his district (an operator will put you through) and then fax a photo of his ID and have his voting place moved to where he is and do it even the day of voting. In the US, you have your one over crowded spot, where lines are long and usually outside under the elements, to wait and vote. Period. Can not be there, get an absentee vote, but you have to plan it out and you have to be far away, that is in another country.
If a voter in Russia is to sick or an invalid or to old to stand in line, they register ahead of time and a volunteer with a witness will come to their house to have them vote and place the vote in a lockbox (yes paper not forgable computer votes). In the US? Well, if you're in one of those classes of people, it would seem you should not be voting anyways, after all, who really wants your vote anyways?
If you are overseas, the Russian voter can go to his embassy or consulate and vote, on the same day as the vote in the nation and get counted at the same time. In America, the voter, that is the American overseas, gets an absentee card he then sends off and it will never get counted anyways. That is how the American military constantly does not really get to vote.
Owner: Stanislav Mishin at stas.mishin71@gmail.com
"Whosoever shall come to us with the sword shall perish by it. Upon this stood and stands the land of Russia".
St Prince Alexander Nevsky, in the 13th century
Romans 8:31
7 comments:
I cannot fault you for any of your major points, you are correct, the US voting system is screwed up compared to many other countries. I was even grumbling to myself the other day about one of your points, about how scheduling election day in the middle of the week, when people are at work, is crazy.
I have a few minor details to nitpick with you tho, as I've never experienced long lines at polling stations, or had to wait out in the weather. Also, there is no restriction against early (or absentee) voting in elections, except that it must be done ahead of time, to be counted with the regular votes. As you say, tho, there have been cases where government officials have given the run-around to those citizens overseas (frequently soldiers) with their absentee votes, either by refusing to send those ballots out in a timely manner, or not counting them with the regular votes.
The electronic vote system used in the US which was manipulated to give Bush a lead in Florida in 2000 also had a similar controversy in Mexico which Greg Palast covered for Democracy Now.
Not that western observers are worth a damn anyway as the CIA/Soros and EU institutions like Belarus, China, Venezuela and Serbia finance all opposition parties, alternative media, NGO’s, etc in Russia most of which are targeted towards minority ethnic groups which are historically hostile to Russia. Hell they even finance the exit polls indicating which party will win or not.
In the 96 elections in Russia the OSCE and international observers helped fake election results to bring Yeltsin into power for a second term and basically gave Berezovsky and the Oligarchs and foreign powers total control of the Kremlin and in Serbia Otpor activists burned ballots of voting stations were Milosevic was leading in the vote.
http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=14536&IBLOCK_ID=35&PAGE=1
http://www.network54.com/Forum/84302/thread/1016402697/HOW+THE+US+BOUGHT+YELTSIN%27S+ELECTION
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,984833,00.html
The top financial contributors to both Republican and Democratic parties were the exact same international banks like Goldman Sachs who put their banking advisors into financial advisors no matter what the administration.
@Stas
What do you make of the US supporting the Greater Circassia project which universities like John Hopkins which is tax payer funded and previously hosted a meeting with NED funded scholar of separatist exiled foreign minister talking about his NED funded book Chechnya: Independence won and lost and Circassia scholars at the Jamestown foundation that also funded pro Chechen separatist websites and lobby on their behalf in the US funding research into the Circassian genocide?
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2011/11/14/the-west-plays-cherkess-card-against-russia.html
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2010/12/28/geopolitical-games-around-greater-circassia.html
http://www.network54.com/Forum/84302/thread/1274208166/Promoting+ethnic+hatred+1917+Redux-+Georgia-Jamestown+foundation+host+H+N%2CE+C+C
FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has recently wrote some good articles recently highlighting US-NATO-Chechen terrorist cooperation in the North Caucasus.
FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds: US directly supported Chechen terror groups between 96-2001
http://youtu.be/dfG77p8_gSs?t=6m22s
Why non US-Turkish diplomatic cables between 96-2001
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/11/28/bfp-exclusive-revisiting-my-silence-on-wikileaks/#more-8983
BFP Exclusive: US-NATO-Chechen Militia Joint Operations Base
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/11/22/bfp-exclusive-us-nato-chechen-militia-joint-operations-base/
Edmonds talks to Corbett about her US-Chechen-NATO article
http://www.corbettreport.com/interview-422-sibel-edmonds/
Mattexian is right about the military absentee ballots not being counted. Just a few elections back our islamo-marxist democrat party leaders were openly and boisterously advocating NOT counting the military vote. And we've all seen how he "community organizing" organization ACORN rigs the vote count, the voter registration and election fraud, and they do it all with "earmarked" money extorted from hard working honest citizens by the islamo-marxist democrat party. US elections are highly "rigged" at every level. The US policy makers responsible for the inhumane policys around the world including the anti-Russian policies, the anti-Serb policies, the anti-Christian policies are basically all illegitimately elected officials or appointees of illegitimately elected officials.
Very insightful but I guess that it is not all roses in Russian politics either. Link discusses recent election problems. http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/05/9217381-voters-punish-putin-as-russias-communists-make-comeback
On the issue of elections in the USA compared to those in other countries, the problem is where to start. There are so many places to begin.
There are no international observers in USA, but Western observers have the right to pronounce on elections in the developing world. Frankly it would be helpful if there were some international oversight of the US elections.
Recently, a Governor of a State raised the option of cancelling the 2012 elections. While the excuse was that Congress and the political elite were too busy working on the problems of the country, obviously the real problem was the expectation that a certain political party would lose big in the upcoming national elections.
In what other nation could a local leader raise the issue of canceling the elections without complaint from their own political party? Aside from military dictatorships, it is difficult to imagine.
And there was another scandal before the November elections where voting workers of a certain political party were advised to list names off gravestones in cemetaries. That is a reminder of one older man who wished to be buried in Chicago so that he could still vote Democratic.
Also note the 200 million dollars admittedly spent by the USA on the recent elections in Egypt. What such a sum of money could do if put to use in Russia! The end result of investing in political machinery and purchasing relevant assets might not be for the best benefit of that nation.
Nice post Stan.
Kvestion: In most US elections, a large proportion of the ballots cast are never counted. Instead, a complex sampling technique based on past election results and sampled returns is applied, unless a candidate is able to demand a hand count of ballots. (This is what was happening in Bush v. Gore in Florida.)
While sampling can be a legitimate means of statistical analysis, this can lead to some interesting outcomes. Again vid. Bush v. Gore.
Do Russian election officials actually physically count all ballots cast, or do they rely on samples?
If the answer to my kvestion is what I think it is, that is more fuel for the fire.
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