(Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, running for a new six-year term in an election that his opponents say is a parody of democracy, said on Tuesday that past U.S. elections had been rigged by postal voting.

“In the United States, previous elections were falsified through postal voting … they bought ballots for $10, filled them out, and threw them into mailboxes without any supervision from observers, and that’s it,” Putin said, without providing evidence.

    • gibmiser@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Why would putin lie about such a thing? I’m going to blindly believe him since it confirms my existing beliefs.

    • PugJesus@kbin.social
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      8 months ago

      MAGA and tankies. I’d say strange bedfellows, but honestly, they’re not that different beyond what shade of red they prefer to be painted.

      • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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        8 months ago

        Cosplay communists.

        No one who’s an actual communist would support Yeltsin and the Oligarchs’ friend Putin.

          • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Well, I gotta say that you’re the first person I’ve encountered that didn’t immediately feel shame for randomly bringing up a totally irrelevant political faction after that question. I suppose the next question is, what do you consider a tanky? Anyone left of democrats? Or do you have a more specific definition in mind?

            Edit: downvote me all you want, but this is a legitimate question. I’m a type of anarchist that advocates for mutual aid, industrial unionism, and a complete decentralization of power. I’ve been called a tanky because I support tenant unions.

            • krashmo@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Aren’t you tired of conversations like this? It doesn’t matter what label any of us use to describe our political views. We don’t have the power to implement them. Those that do don’t give a fuck what we think. We’re all just yelling at the perceived other while we watch things deteriorate.

              • rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                Actually, I am. I’m sick of purity tests, infighting, and a disorganized left. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have any power. I have local power; we all do. I have tactical agreement with Democrats for a progressive future, that doesn’t make me a Democrat.

                I can influence local politics to have a progressive local government. With enough people doing this in their local government, we influence regions and states to be more progressive and push the country forward to a more equitable and just society. My weapon of choice is organizing a union at my work. Once we win, I’m going to organize my apartment complex. Once we win, I’m going to organize my broader community.

            • cmbabul@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              I’m literally standing in the position you described and no one has ever called me a tankie, if you think China and the USSR were/are positive forces for common people, want to accelerate the collapse of the US, and/or have Anakin Skywalker tendencies (“then they should be made to”) you’re a tankie. If not you most likely aren’t a tankie

    • jas0n@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      This 100%. The Russian propaganda to right wing talking heads pipeline is just so painfully obvious.

  • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Elections have been rigged for a long, long time. Gerrymandering is absolutely insane. Cities with meandering sections cut off. Disadvantaged suburbs slammed into afluent areas across town to dilute the votes.

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      But not rigged in the way Putin and the Republicans claim. Rigged in ways that help them.

    • remotelove@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      You could also have any political opponents thrown in jail or wait for them to fall out of a window. You don’t need to tamper with the system that way.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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    8 months ago

    “In the United States, previous elections were falsified through postal voting … they bought ballots for $10, filled them out, and threw them into mailboxes without any supervision from observers, and that’s it,”

    Problem - That’s not the way vote by mail works.

    1. You register to vote and place a signature on file.

    2. You get your ballot in the mail and vote.

    3. You put the ballot in the mailing envelope and sign the back of the envelope.

    4. When the ballot is returned, they compare the signature on the envelope with the signature on file, if it matches, the ballot is set aside for counting.

    5. If there’s a PROBLEM:

    A) Missing signature
    B) Signature doesn’t match
    C) Ballot damaged or unreadable
    D) Ballot already recorded as present

    The ballot gets returned to the voter for correction, assuming there’s enough time for it to be corrected.

    What Putin describes wouldn’t work, because the fake ballots either wouldn’t have a signature, wouldn’t have a valid signature, or wouldn’t correspond to a registered voter.

      • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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        8 months ago

        You know how the Nigerian prince scams intentionally use terrible English to filter out the stupid ones?

        Half the people you come across are below average. Technology has made it exceptionally effective to target the dumb and vulnerable.

      • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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        8 months ago

        The supervision is the signature comparison, just like in person voting where you’d go in, sign the register, and they’d compare that signature to the one on file.

        • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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          8 months ago

          “filled them out, and threw them into mailboxes without any supervision from observers” Where does that suggest it is the signature involved? The signature is compared before Voting when Voting in person and after the office receives it when Voting by Mail. It makes no sense that lil’ dictator pootie meant the signature in his statement.

          • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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            8 months ago

            Valid ballots have signatures matching the registered voter casting the ballot.

            In Putin’s scenario, there are no signatures, the ballots are not associated with registered voters, and as such would be rejected at the polling location.

            • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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              8 months ago

              That is not involved in the supervision of filling them out nor posting them. Both those things happen before or after, not during.

              • jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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                8 months ago

                Nobody supervises the filling out of ballots, that’s an entirely private matter.

                The only supervision that happens is the comparing of signatures and that happens both at in person and vote by mail voting.

  • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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    8 months ago

    Cool story.

    Why is it so hard for people to judge credibility? It’s just (1) listen to a statement, (2) ask if what a person is saying directly benefits them and (3) if it does, require evidence to believe it.

    We know this is not credible because by saying it, Putin diverts attention from his own corrupt election and normalizes election fraud. So did he provide evidence? No. So it should be ignored.

    Can’t we all just… Do that?

  • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Rhetoric of this sort just promotes distrust in election systems, which of course prompts demagogues like Trump to promise voters they can fix it if they gain power. The fun thing here is that the right here needs you to believe things that aren’t true in order to justify them doing a coup, the stupid thing is that stupid people take this kind of talk seriously.

    But seriously, American voting is relatively secure- it’s just that where lawmakers don’t want voters deciding the ‘wrong’ way they’ve gerrymandered them into districts to prevent them doing it, and they’ve done things to strip voters of their voting rights and to suppress voting and to make it inconvenient or difficult to vote. This has been a bipartisan thing in the past, but today the GOP are the chief offenders.

    Also, Putin’s Russia is in the stage of democracy where elections are an exercise in flaunting the death of democracy itself, and nobody should ever take his talk about elections as being in good faith, ever

  • teamevil@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Protecting bitch, Putin rigs Russian elections and tried to rig ours again but failed. Fuck him

  • Yewb@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I love the logic pivot on people who in the 90s thought russia was just straight up evil are now looking at them as the bastion of conservative ideals…

    Go move to Russia boys, oh you don’t want to? Why not they apparently have it all figured out.

  • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Interesting.

    Seems like they’re going to be shooting for an off election cycle coup, since their last one failed and its not quite time for the next window of opportunity.

    The supreme court taking up Trumps case the most significant case in the history of the United States. It will decide if our constitution has any real meaning (in some ways, it determines the tests the very legitimacy of constitutionalism as a system). The language of the constitution, and the interpretation of this amendment is very cut and dry. No one can reasonably argue it wasn’t designed, and intended to prevent Trump or Trump-like candidates. It was an insurrection against the United States of America. He not only partook in it, he led it, supported it.

    So this may be a signal that Putin thinks the Supreme Court will rule against Trump. Go ahead and start seeding the doubt around the next election cycle now.

    It may also be a sign for something far more nefarious, that perhaps rather than allowing a ruling to happen, Trump goes for a coup-in-name-only, makes the claim that the election was stolen, and that he is ‘President-in-Abstentia’ sitting in Moscow. Then gets his lackies to make road blocks across the country, idk.