In Election News
Dr. Cole explains why the media is misreporting the Egyptian elections. The most important point is that the Salafis [fundamentalists] and the Muslim Brotherhood don’t like each other even a little bit. Their visions of Islam do not coincide, and they won’t form a coalition. The second point, is that this was an election for only a segment of the parliament, and there are two more segments to be elected, with candidates running without party affiliation. It is not a standard parliamentary system, so there is no way of actually knowing what the results will be until the dust settles and they get down to work.
In the Russian election Putin’s United Russia party suffers poll setback
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party has seen a sharp drop in support in parliamentary elections.
With 96% of votes counted, electoral officials said United Russia had just under 50%, down from 64% in 2007.
The vote is being seen as a popularity test of Mr Putin, who is running for the presidency in March.
United Russia will still form the government, because the threshold for representation is a high 7% of the vote to receive the first seat in the Duma [parliament], so United Russia will get a majority of the seats, but they don’t have the power to muck about with the constitution, as they have had since the last election.
All of the other parties took votes away from United Russia, even with some creative vote counting techniques, and a number of magically appearing ballots.
Putin’s ‘campaign workers’ are going to have to work harder to ensure that he wins by the established margin.
2 comments
Given that voter turnout exceeded 146% in some precincts (Chicago rules, apparently — vote early, vote often 😉 ), Putin’s “campaign workers” appear to have already revved up the graveyards. They’ll probably have to ramp the vote up to to 175% of registered voters to actually get Putin elected with the desired margin :twisted:.
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
They only have three months to create those ‘special ballots’ and deliver them to selected locations to be ‘discovered’.
He has let the supply of bread and circuses lapse, and there aren’t any major conflicts to show how tough he is. He may have to crush a ‘terrorist plot’ and it takes time to create those.