Actual turnout in Russia’s State Duma election was about 40%, experts say. Russia’s Central Election Commission put it at 59%.

The recent State Duma elections in Russia saw an actual voter turnout of approximately 40%, according to independent experts. This contrasts with the figure of over 59% given by the Central Election Commission. Mathematician Boris Ovchinnikov and election observer Roman Udot from the independent broadcaster TV Rain reported the lower turnout figure.

Ovdot stated that the discrepancy indicates the administrative resources are being pushed to their limits. He warned that when the administrative resource is exceeded by around 20%, various irregularities such as violence, ballot stuffing, and carousel voting can occur. Udot also noted that the political party "A Just Russia" was essentially "brought into" the State Duma.

According to him, as soon as 96% of the votes had been counted and it became clear that "A Just Russia" would not meet the 5% threshold for representation, votes from other parties were reportedly credited to it. Prior to this, experts had mentioned that more than 60,000 votes for "A Just Russia" were added to the Central Election Commission's data within an hour on September 21.

Despite this, "A Just Russia" will still be represented in the new Duma. Meduza, the news organization reporting on this, maintains transparency about its use of artificial intelligence in its reporting. This story was written by one of their human journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model that adheres to their editorial standards.

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