The final turnout in the Volgograd region became an indicator of rigging.

The voter turnout in the Volgograd region for the State Duma elections was a record 68.08%, which could not have been achieved without falsifications, even under conditions of mass coercion of budget workers and students, said a journalist and political scientist interviewed by "Caucasian Knot."

As reported by "Caucasian Knot", on September 18, the Volgograd police warned civil activists about the inadmissibility of actions during the elections. The election commission reported that only on Friday, more than 36% of voters in the Volgograd region had voted; such turnout may be related either to artificial inflation of the figure or to coercion to participate in voting, local analysts indicated.

The authorities actively used administrative resources during the campaign, and the falsifications were "obvious," said Volgograd political scientist Ilya Kravchenko.*

"Budget workers were rounded up, and they were forced to vote under supervision with absentee ballots. There were also, of course, falsifications, including quite obvious ones: reports came in that at one of the polling stations there were simply no booths. There was also information from one of the universities that students were being forced to vote for "United Russia" and photograph their ballots for reporting. Unfortunately, there are no confirmations of these cases, and no one has filed complaints," Kravchenko* told a correspondent of "Caucasian Knot."

It was impossible to determine the affiliation of observers at the polling stations, he noted, calling the state of the opposition in the region "very poor." Kravchenko* called the election results "already quite clear."

"People were brainwashed and told to vote for "United Russia," and they voted. And if specific individuals [candidates from the party] already cause more rejection, and people vote for "someone other than the United Russia candidate," he believes.

In his assessment, the share of ballot stuffing did not exceed 20% on average, and budget workers and "home workers" voted "as the TV tells them"; many opposition-minded voters ignored the elections, believing that "nothing is decided there."

"That is why voting in a free country should be a right – on par with the right to drive a car and own a weapon, – and not an obligation," Kravchenko* concluded.

Administrative mobilization alone cannot ensure such turnout, believes journalist Andrey Rebrov. "In the absence of proper observation, it is not difficult for commission members to simply draw the necessary results in the final protocols," he is convinced.

Parliamentary parties traditionally send their observers to the polling stations, "but that doesn't mean anything yet," Rebrov noted. In his opinion, representatives of the Communist Party, "United Russia," the Liberal Democratic Party, "New People," and "Fair Russia" are there "not to control the honesty of the procedure, but to create the appearance of control." As far as he knows, no parliamentary party in the region sent independent observers with significant experience to the polling stations.

The journalist recalled that similar results were shown in the previous elections to the regional Duma: this, in his opinion, indicates the minimum threshold that the regional administration must demonstrate to the center in every election. "It is hard to imagine that today, in conditions of inflation and gasoline shortages, the ruling party is improving its results," he stated.

To win in a single-member district, 25-35% of the votes is enough, and the single-member candidates from United Russia in the region had no real competitors. "Therefore, the system does not even need to try to draw such high figures as in the case of the list. If in the case of party lists the authorities need to show a high percentage, then the goal of the single-member candidates from United Russia is to win the elections, and the final percentages are not that important," Rebrov pointed out.

According to the journalist, the Volgograd region can be classified as "electoral sultanates." "Under [Governor Andrey] Bocharov, our region has become an electoral sultanate, where there are almost no polling stations where votes are counted honestly. With a real turnout of about 30-35%, they draw a turnout twice as high. The results of "United Russia" are also inflated by a factor of two to report to Moscow," Rebrov concluded.

* included in the Russian register of foreign agents.

** the activities of the Meta company (which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) are banned in Russia.