Independent group points out that Russia's election was the most fraudulent and corrupt in history

An independent Russian election monitoring group said this Monday (18) that the presidential election won by Vladimir Putin overwhelmingly, with almost 90% of the votes, was the most fraudulent and corrupt in the country's history.

The Golos (“Voice” in Portuguese) group said the three-day elections that ended on Sunday cannot be considered genuine because “the campaign took place in a situation where the fundamental articles of the Russian Constitution, which guarantee rights and freedoms policies, were essentially not in force.”

“Never before have we seen a presidential campaign that fell so far short of constitutional standards,” the group said in a statement.

The Kremlin on Monday hailed the result, with a record turnout of 77.4%, as a demonstration that the Russian people had “consolidated” around Putin, and said Western attempts to portray the election as illegitimate were absurd.

The United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and others said the vote was neither free nor fair due to the arrest of political opponents and censorship.

Founded in 2000, Golos is Russia's only electoral monitoring body independent of the authorities.

Considered a “foreign agent” in 2013, the group was banned from sending observers to polling places. One of its leaders, Grigory Melkonyants, is in prison awaiting trial on charges that Golos says are politicized.

Russia's electoral commission said the vote took place under adequate scrutiny. It stated that there were a third of a million Russian observers, nominated by candidates, parties and social organizations, as well as hundreds of foreigners.

Pressure

Golos said that candidates and parties had refrained from sending observers to some regions. In others, observers were removed after voting began, he said.

“In private conversations, representatives of candidates and parties admitted that this was done under pressure,” the group said.

Other “undesirable” observers were removed from polling stations and summoned to appear at military registration offices during the voting period, while others were detained and searched, he added.

Golos said examples of voter intimidation include the presence of law enforcement officers at polling stations and reports that agents peered over voters' shoulders to read their ballots.

An official at a polling place in the Moscow region “took the completed ballot from a voter's hand and checked who she voted for,” the group said.

Authorities elsewhere in Moscow demanded that a local election official open a sealed ballot box and hand over one of the receipts, Golos said.

Reuters was unable to independently verify these incidents.

There were scattered incidents of protests at polling stations. Some Russians set fire to voting booths or poured green paint into ballot boxes.

Calling these people “scoundrels,” Russia’s electoral chief warned that those who tried to disrupt the vote would face five years in prison, and former president Dmitry Medvedev said they could be charged with treason.

At least 74 people were arrested across Russia on the final day of voting on Sunday, according to human rights group OVD-Info.