Time Machine, 2012 Russian Election; Fraught with Fraud

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/04/putin-alleged-voter-fraud-russian-election

[FONT=&quot]Two women hover over a ballot box in the industrial Russian city of Cherepovets, stuffing in ballot after ballot. On the streets of Moscow, an independent election monitor armed with an iPhone trails a van full of "carousel" voters – people bussed from polling site to polling site in order to cast multiple votes for [/FONT]Vladimir Putin[FONT=&quot].[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Three months after Moscow exploded in a storm of fury over allegedly widespread electoral fraud during the country's parliamentary vote, Russians went to the polls to vote against or, mostly, for Vladimir Putin in his quest to return to the presidency.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Putin quickly claimed victory, waiting until just over 20% of votes were counted, but his opponents just as quickly cried foul, armed with reels of evidence of alleged fraud. They uploaded them by the thousands to their Twitter accounts and LiveJournal blogs, helping the indignation go viral.[/FONT]

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[FONT=&quot]In fair elections, the graph would form a bell curve, with its peak indicating the average turnout for the entire election. Reading from left to right, Shpilkin’s graph shows a relatively normal bell curve that peaks at about 36 percent turnout and then, as it moves right, shows a jagged curve that dips unevenly and then begins rising again, as vast numbers of polling stations begin reporting turnouts of 70 percent or more.
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Moreover, Shpilkin shows that almost all “extra” votes from polling stations reporting higher-than-average turnout went to United Russia. That is, a party such as ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s LDPR received virtually the same number of votes from polling stations reporting a turnout of 95 percent as it did from stations reporting turnouts of 65 percent. United Russia, by contrast, received about four times as many at the 95 percent stations.[/FONT]

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https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/09/russia-putin-election-fraud/500867/

And yes, Obama called to congratulate him
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.go...eadout-president-s-call-president-elect-putin

I couldn't find much critical attacks on Obama over this, no ABC news splash, no NY Times lamenting the choice. It was "business as usual".

I'm not bringing this up to say "LOOK LOOK OBAMA DID IT!" I can find the same sort of information when Bush was in office.

The point is, why is it such the big deal now? Well, duh, the media narrative is that Putin has some control or influence over Trump, the "collusion" mess. To feed that, the outrage is manufactured, ****s like John McCain looking for attention feed it. It's unseemly, all of it. And those of you all up and making mountains out of this mole hill... you're being used. I don't know if it's willingly prostituting your outrage because you hate Trump or it's because "everyone else is doing". It's like Trump won and common sense, critical thinking and history went out the ****ing window. I'm gobsmacked, truly, by the way people are so easily manipulated.

Trump has plenty of a faults worthy of castigation, this wasn't one of them. He's a crass, uncouth, wildly trollish man who frankly dismays me in his comportment. Valid areas to attack. Calling Putin to say "'grats on the win"? Hardly, by precedent that goes back to when phone calls crossed the Atlantic.

Stop letting others make you look the fool people, c'mon.