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Comment by elephantum | Hacker News Reader

The thing is, that it's all very time-sensitive. And I expect pressure was unreasonably high.

We have elections in Russia this weekend and Navalny app was used as a tool to coordinate protest voting. It is called "Smart Voting" by Navalny team and it is getting a lot of attention for upcomping elections.

If Apple and Google would just be a little bit slower and complied next Monday :)

Still there are more ways to coordinate Smart Voting. Google Docs with recommendations are published. There are youtube videos where Navalny team reads whole list aloud. There's a Telegram bot.

So I hope this action would just bring more attention to the matter.

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It's not clear what does the app do? What is protest voting and how do you coordinate it ?

It's voting for the candidate most likely to win against the main party's candidates. The app's purpose is to concentrate protest voters on one candidate without spreading them over all of them.

Could the same thing be accomplished with rank choice voting?

Wouldn't you have to be in control of the government for that in the first place?

Are you asking if Russia would allow alternative voting system in order to make it easier voting for opposition candidate?

It sounds like the app has a similar goal as ranked choice voting.

Russia doesn't presently use rank choice voting, so it's not an option for this weekend's election.

Isn't there a lot of evidence that Russia's elections are rigged?

Like turnout percentages have ridiculous percentages of ratios that end in 0 and 5 - as do growth in turnout.

Sometimes they are, but (mostly in large cities) people sign up as election monitors to prevent it. Sadly, most of 90 000 polling stations are not monitored by independent observers.

The main way to control elections now is not letting opposition candidates to get into the ballot. For example, on this elections many candidates were rejected because they are "linked" to Navalny's organisation that was admitted as an extremist organization by the court. Some people are rejected because the signatures they have collected are deemed invalid. Obviously you cannot win if you cannot get into the ballot.

There also is electronic voting (voting over Internet) which is difficult to monitor. It is also worth noting that while you can vote over Internet, you cannot collect more than 50% of required signatures for being added to a ballot this way.

They are rigged, but not as fully as they were in e.g. Belarus.

Russia is a giant country with 85 "states" and around ~100k polling stations, so the process is very complex and involves different voting and administrative cultures. In some of those states they are fully rigged, with 95% turnout and 98% votes for the ruling party, but in some the elections are surprisingly fair. In a lot of others they can be made fair if any poll watchers are present. Overall the thinking is that they add themselves 10-15% additional votes across the country by straight up voter fraud.

The main way they rig the elections right now is by not allowing anyone who could win to participate and then throwing all of the state resources towards promoting their candidate. That's why consolidated voting for a single opposition candidate can work in this context.

A very nice explanation, thank you!

To add to this: this elections are run independently in every region. The government's ability to rig them in one area does not affect the outcome in another.

Yes there is a lot of evidence. From blatent ballot stuffing to more tricks like changing names. This time they even shaved someones head to make them look like the candidate ;)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/06/three-near-ide...

A concerning development this year is they allow online voting? Which seems like the easiest way for them to flip just enough votes to win, without giving themselves 95% of the votes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/03/19...

Given an address, the app provides the name of the suggested candidate in the corresponding voting district. The idea is to consolidate votes around only one candidate who does not belong to Putin's party.

In Russia, many potentially popular candidates are not allowed to run, were imprisoned, or otherwise persecuted, and in some cases killed. Those who remained are often spoilers or people you would not willfully vote for. So usually, people unhappy with the regime either did not show up for the election or spread their votes between many unpopular candidates. That is how Putin's party has support from 20-25% of the population according to various polls but commands 75% of the seats in the parliament. This, and election being rigged. So, the idea is to consolidate the votes of the people who are not happy with Putin's regime. If anything, just to send the message. And that's "protest voting".

The list of the candidates to support was published at the last moment to avoid the risk that they will be removed from the election. The app is the main channel to publish this list because it can auto-update and bypass Internet censorship. Normal websites are often inaccessible without a VPN. Google and Apple shut off this channel.

It is a simple list of candidates recommended to vote for that, according to Navalny team's research, have the highest chance of defeating the Putin's candidates.

The idea is that instead of spreading votes and allowing the baddies to get the highest percentage (but not even close to 50%) and win, people would concentrate their votes.

If you are still in disbelief, that Kremlin would apply such an enormous pressure just to ban a simple list of voting recommendations, I want to remind you that this is exactly what happened last night: the recommendations were posted on Google Docs and Russia decided to ban the whole Google Docs service for that.

Please don't call it elections. Nothing even close.

Well, it's all in the eye of the beholder. As someone living in Scandinavia looking at the US that doesn't look like elections much either.

Pick your favourite animal:

A: Black horse

B: Brown horse

Z: Pony

No it is not.

(if you really "living in Scandinavia") You literally don't understand what are you talking about, which is damn obvious when you comparing Scandinavia or even US to Russia. You basically comparing Tesla car to horse-drawn carriage and draw similarities on a basis that both have 4 wheels and therefore they are both great and safe transportation devices.

I'm not from Scandinavia and the vast majority of US politicians look like interchangeable parts to me as well.

It doesn't matter. What matters are how many of them and their staff or supporters gets bullied by the authorities, forced to flee the country, found themselves or their relatives in the middle of absurd lawsuits, gets beaten, poisoned or killed?

My point was purely about elections, and that elections only matter if you have a reasonable amount of choice. You're arguing about something completely different.

My arguing is exactly about that! You can't name something as "elections" when ~~a huge~~ any part of country's people not just don't have a political representative at all, but gets actively counteracted to have such representative.

What is "a huge any part"? Looks like too many determiners to me, so I'm not sure what you're saying there.

> don't have a political representative at all

That doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you live in a place like Puerto Rico. I'm not sure if Russia has similar places, but I assume it doesn't.

> What is "a huge any part"?

HN doesn't support a strike-through markup. "~~a huge~~" means striked-through font here. I've written it first and then after some thought tried to show that actually the proper word there is "any".

> That doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you live in a place like Puerto Rico. I'm not sure if Russia has similar places, but I assume it doesn't.

You are so much disconnected from what is and how it's happening here...

> You are so much disconnected from what is and how it's happening here.

How am I "disconnected" in thinking that Russia doesn't have US' federal structure that includes non-states?

All people allowed to take part in elections are sanctioned by Kremlin.

Try to sign up as a candidate and best case you'll get rejected, worst case beaten, bullied, jailed or murdered.

I have no doubt that what you're saying is true. Still, that doesn't make the difference between lack of choice and illusion of choice any bigger.

You can create a political party in US. In Russia even attempting it will get you jailed or murdered.

It's still weird how on the West it's customary to compare the uncomparable. In Chechnya (or Iran) all gay people are lynched without exception and women are treated as slaves. The West has its share of homophobia and misoginy but it's not even close, not by a thousand miles.

You can create a political party in the US with exactly the same amount of effect on future politics that such an attempt would have in Russia. Compared to either of those, influencing the political scene by creating a new party is vastly easier in many other parts of the civilized world. For example, there are parties in my country's parliament that didn't even exist a decade ago. It would seem that the last time a non-Democrat, non-Republican party had a seat in US Congress was around 1950 or so - seventy years ago. That seems like quite the difference in political culture to me.

> I'm not from Scandinavia and the vast majority of US politicians look like interchangeable parts to me as well.

USA citizen. What's hilarious is that 10 years ago, I would have readily agreed with you. Both parties were too deeply beholden to special interests and corporate interests. There were some policy differences, but not that much, really.

In the last five years, however, one party has gone completely batshit insane. Norms, precedent, common decency, acceptance of basic facts, acceptance of basic common sense... these have all gone out the window. And been replaced with cult-like unwavering loyalty to a single man.

The other party, though still frequently dissapointingly inept and incompetent, now has my unhesitating support. It is not even close in my mind anymore.

The way I see it, one party has gone dumb, and the other party is obviously going evil (I am from Russia so you can guess what I think of leftism). The question is whether you prefer your government dumb or evil; I think dumb is... the lesser of two evils.

But I can agree on the timing aspect, I'd vote for Obama OR Romney over literally any politician prominent in 2021.

If you're from Russia, what part of the Democratic party looks like "leftism" to you?

The "left wing" in the USA is the "center-right" in other parts of the world. We're still a ways away from basic stuff like universal health care that every other developed country has.

Not really... somebody posted here recently, I cannot find a comment; supposedly posting CDU (German center-right party) policies into the recent NYT poll gets you lumped with trumpist wing of GOP. Many policies that are considered right-wing in the US enjoy broad support in European countries (e.g. official languages). Some things practiced Europe, like the Danish "immigrant ghetto" policies, would cause the US left to melt down so hard they'd burn a hole thru the Earth and come out in the Indian ocean (to be clear, I don't support or don't know/care enough to have an opinion about most of this stuff).

Universal healthcare is provided by many countries from Singapore, that few would call left-wing; to outright totalitarian regimes, e.g. modern Russia. It's an indicator of statism, not leftism; I am not a big fan of that either, but non-leftist statism (a-la Singapore) is ok and totally different from what I'm talking about. Tangentially but helpfully, I would recommend looking up the difference between social democracy and democratic socialism, as described by democratic socialists.

Politicalcompass.org is super helpful for items like this. It turns out we're living in a very authoritarian/right wing world.

Here's a country comparison for the EU. Turns out most of Europe is fairly authoritarian/right wing: https://politicalcompass.org/euchart

Most countries at least have a somewhat relevant political party in quadrant 3 (libertarian/left), as you can see in the charts for EU, Germany, and Canada.

The 2020 US political candidates show very little differentiation between Trump/Biden, with both very authoritarian/right wing: https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020

So, apparently Sweden, with massive taxes and welfare state, is 85+% right-wing (on l2r axis), and even the democratic socialist (literally meaning worker control of means of production), free-everything Sanders just barely makes it to the left side. It looks like this compass needs some declination adjustment.

I am of course comparing to the USSR, not modern Russia. Pretty much the entire "progressive" wing of the party, with its anti-capitalism and fostering massive welfare state dependency, as well as the recent focus on "oppression" and "power", and purity testing.

I am pretty meh/cynical about the economic aspects, actually; sure, I think these are bad ideas, but unless they run the thing entirely into the ground, I believe there's going to be enough for me until old age at this point, and of course I view legally abusing government programs as libertarian activism - e.g. if there's universal healthcare it would make it so much easier to retire early and use it for all it's worth ;)

What I am actually genuinely afraid of is the cultural garbage, esp. as it infiltrates the education system. See the capitalism/socialism approval polls among the young people, etc. USSR has collapsed when I was 7, but I was still brainwashed enough that I remember asking my parents about the English Premier League - how come they have soccer in England? I was surprised because I thought it was a capitalist system where everyone was oppressed, so at 6-7 or whatever I didn't understand how they could have a soccer league. That was of course while living with 2 STEM MSc parents and a sister in a 700sqft 2-room flat, not being able to afford a car, and knowing nothing about the actual living conditions in England.

From what I know about the school systems in big cities (I know some people who work at schools who are pretty left-wing and they talk about this stuff as if it was a good thing, plus from the news/leaks to right-wing sources), the oppression/anti-capitalist propaganda is rampant, and the current "far-left" wing of the Democratic party are very popular. If it's between this stuff and dumb nationalist rednecks with whom I disagree on 90% of pretty much everything, I'm going to throw my lot with the rednecks.

> USSR has collapsed when I was 7, but I was still brainwashed enough that I remember asking my parents about the English Premier League - how come they have soccer in England?

Uhuh. So in 1991 you asked about an institution that wasn't created until 1992, because you believed it couldn't exist under capitalism even though it's actually explicitly a capitalist endeavour to make the richest clubs in English soccer even richer?

I would say that most likely you should watch less Tucker Carlson, or at least be mindful of the fact that Tucker gets paid millions of dollars per year to make you "genuinely afraid of cultural garbage".

However maybe this is a good time to explain the Football Pyramid for both imaginary Russian seven year olds and HN readers instead.

In the US system major sports leagues are purely business, no matter how terrible the Yankees are they will continue to play every year so long as it makes economic sense. The outcome of games isn't rigged (usually) but no matter how terrible you are at whichever sport, your "punishment" is typically just better chance to win next year.

In England football teams are arranged into a Pyramid of leagues. In principle over years of failure/ success, Liverpool FC, an internationally renowned team could swap places with Kingsley United, a bunch of amateurs from the Liverpool area. Each year, up to three worst performing Premier League team can be "relegated" to the league below, the Championship, and up to three of the best Championship teams are "promoted" to the Premier League, while the same happens in the Championship, League One, League Two, then the National League, and after that there are regional leagues, with promotions or relegations being regional right down until we reach the likes of Kingsley United.

The creation of the Premier League all those years ago, and a more recent attempt to do the same at a European level, is because very wealthy clubs envy the US system. In England you're only ever one bad season away from relegation, and relegation means much less money coming into your club from fans (local "true" fans may stay, but who supports an obscure Division Two team from across the globe the way people support Manchester United?) and from TV rights (the Premier League rights sell for a lot of money, the Championship is much cheaper, and most other games are not televised). More tiers means fewer slices of the cake, more money for the very top clubs which they can spend ensuring they stay there (e.g. buying star players for eye-watering sums of money). The relatively recently abandoned "European Super League" was intended to be even more like the US system by not having relegation. So some of its clubs might have been awful but too bad, they're staying, and gathering the resulting cash, forever. Blergh.

Is that really your answer? If I were to respond in the same spirit, I could only suggest you watch less RT or I dunno, read less Jacobin.

I don't remember what it was called back then, I asked about the league in general. Spartak Moscow had a good run in Champions League that year and that was probably the year I started watching soccer. I know now how leagues are organized, but Soviet teams were at least officially amateurs, and associated with social organization (e.g. CSKA is an "army team" and Dynamo is a "cop team", etc.); even in late 90ies/aughts, opposing fans still used e.g. "musor" (Russian cop insult that means "trash", kinda like "pig" in the US) to yell at Dynamo fans. Or "myaso" ("meat") at Spartak, cause it was associated with a food factory for some time ages ago. So, I didn't understand how "workers" can play soccer when they are exploited. Didn't occur to me that you can get paid to do it and not be "oppressed". Which is the idea you get from even childrens' books, e.g. Neznayka on the Moon, which basically describes how bad capitalism is directly; and others more generally. As well as patriotic movies etc, incl. on how taking stuff from "bourgeoius exploiters" and later from "kulaks" was great and noble.

It's not even about individual books, facts, etc. it's the general outlook in life that one gets when constantly exposed to this. That is where struggle sessions come from (source: former coworkers who immigrated from China as adults). The economic aspects of the ideology also eventually produce this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Sovieticus#Characteristic.... This slow conversion of everything to a similar collectivist, morally-outraged ideology via schools and colleges is what, as I see, might be a risk in the US. Hence the recent changes in Democratic party.

Currently it's a relatively small, if loud, part of the Democratic party, but it is clearly ascendant, especially with younger generation. The reason for that is hardly some horrors of "late stage capitalism" (again, I have direct experience with early stages ;) and numbers also don't lie - millennial per-capita wealth tracks boomers by age, the housing to income ratio in the US is one of the lowest in the developed world, poor Americans have more disposable income than middle class Europeans, etc.). It's mostly propaganda, and maybe a somewhat increased sense of entitlement (also seen in e.g. grade inflation). Both feed into general envy, when one believes the only ways to get more are dishonest or evil - it's a very Soviet sentiment btw, and I hear it all the time, incl. in person in Seattle.

Regardless of the cause, this would literally be the last thing I would ever support. Under a dumb government, individuals can still thrive (one great thing about trump era was how laughably bad he was at achieving most of his agenda).

EDIT: Remove some stuff I added in the prior edit, this is too long :) EDIT2: Make shorter yet.

Same here. I used to vote for a third party candidate in most elections since that was usually who my views aligned most closely with, but in recent years I've switched to voting for the least bad major party because of how awful and terrifying the opposing side has become.

As someone living in Scandinavia you probably have a King.

Anyway, these law makers are still democratically elected in the US (more than we can say about the king of Norway), and these parties are more like coalitions anyway since they're so large and broad.

The king of Norway is not a lawmaker, though. He's not even a minister.

Why do you always start talking about US when somebody talks about injustices in other countries?

Like really.

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