"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. Putin's opponents say the March election in Russia is no real contest as the president wields unchallenged power and his main rival, Alexei Navalny, is serving more than 30 years in jail on charges that Navalny says were trumped up. They say the use of electronic voting creates scope for authorities to manipulate the vote in Putin's favour without detection.

(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.

    • GaMEChld@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      11 months ago

      I will grant that it is different. But is it meaningfully different? Either way, the people are not represented.

      • fidodo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        IMO the difference is it happening in the open. Rigged is too conflated with fraud so I don’t like using the same word as it doesn’t clearly capture the difference.

    • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      31·
      11 months ago

      Okay, but when you factor gerrymandering of districts into the concept of the EC, now you have a rigged election.