Putin Tightens Grip on Russia With Fraudulent Elections

From the 15th to 17th of March this year, Russian voters went to the polls to decide who would be president. The outcome of the election was predictable, with incumbent president Vladimir Putin winning an overwhelming majority of 87% of the vote. As a result, Putin was elected to his fifth term in office and will hold it until 2030. Suspiciously, the election saw him win the highest majority of any candidate ever, in addition to record voter turnout at 77%. Domestic and international observers condemned the fraudulent results. Russian election monitor Golos, the only independent organization of its kind in the country, denounced the election as illegitimate. The group stated that “the fundamental articles of the Russian Constitution, guaranteeing political rights and freedoms, were essentially not in effect.” The Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations published a statement backed by 56 countries, including the EU and US, condemning the elections.

Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin used Putin’s landslide victory as a propaganda tool, declaring that Russia had “consolidated” around Putin. Russian officials stated that the election was free and fair and that Western condemnations of it were only trying to undermine a legitimate victory. It is clear that Putin’s administration will use his victory to continue to justify the dictator’s actions of suppressing dissent and his imperialistic policies in Europe. The tenth anniversary of Russia illegally annexing the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine occurred in tandem with the election. Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 was a prelude to the attempted full-scale conquest of Ukraine that Putin launched in 2022. In a speech following his victory, Putin commemorated the occasion and justified his annexation of Crimea. The rally was a grand celebration of Putin’s rule and included multiple pro-Putin singers performing in a bizarre concert.

Putin’s election fraud this year lost all subtlety. In past elections, most voting stations were legitimate, with some being home to fraud tactics such as ballot stuffing, in which many fraudulent votes are cast to swing an election. Over time, Putin’s methods have gotten more and more egregious, and an increasing number of polling stations have been subject to fraud and voter intimidation. Putin resorted to all manner of underhanded tactics to win. Political leaders in opposition to Putin were legally prevented from running. Alexei Navalny, a prominent critic of Putin and pro-democracy activist, died under suspicious circumstances in prison in February this year, a month before the election.Statistical anomalies in voting results were the key piece of evidence for voter fraud. Meduza, an independent Russian news website, reported on the election fraud. Meduza was established in 2014 by Russian journalists that left their jobs at Lenta.ru, another online Russian news outlet, when the site was turned into a propaganda mouthpiece for the Kremlin. Analyzing polling data, they found that with each Russian election following the 2000 one, increasing discrepancies were spotted that indicated voter fraud. Meduza published a graph of election results showing that in the 2024 election, unprecedented levels of fraud occurred. The standard distribution of voter turnout mapped onto levels of support for Putin showed that polling stations with over 90% turnout nearly always had over 90% support for Putin. These highly suspicious results point to widespread voter fraud, with Meduza estimating that the number of fraudulent ballots was around 22 million. That is around 34% of the total votes cast, which numbers 64.7 million. But Putin didn’t just limit himself to election fraud in Russia. In Russian-occupied provinces of Ukraine, soldiers went from house to house, forcing Ukrainians to go to polling stations to vote for Putin. Ukrainians voted at gunpoint, the implicit threat of violence staring at them. This is in clear violation of international law and was one of the things condemned by the statement the 56 nations made in the UN.

This is Putin’s 5th election, and definitely not the first to see fraud. The 2024 election was notable for the sheer unprecedented scale of the fraud, but Putin’s methods of polling station fraud and oppression of the opposition are classic dictatorial tactics employed by him. As seen in actions taken years before the 2024 election, he isn’t above manipulating Russia’s constitution to get where he wants. In 2008, he amended the constitution to allow six year terms in office. In 2021, during his fourth term in office, he further amended the constitution to “reset” his terms and allow him to be elected two more times. In theory, Putin could be president up until 2036.

Putin’s dismantling of the pro-democracy opposition, his election fraud, and his amending of the constitution all serve to keep him in power indefinitely. Putin’s goal is to reconquer Ukraine and bring it under Russian control in order to satisfy his imperialist ambitions and reclaim what he believes is Russia’s rightful place as the hegemony of eastern Europe. His actions are that of a dictator that wants to satisfy his own personal and political ambitions by means of violence, corruption, fraud, and propaganda.