Vladimir Churov, the head of Russia’s Central Electoral Commission, has already told RIA Novosti that “record” numbers of voters took part in the contest.

Yet as votes continue to be counted, Russian electoral monitors are revealing another side of the story. As evidenced by reports from across Russia, widespread violations and falsifications took place during the March 2nd election. Anecdotal accounts indicate that numerous methods, from ballot stuffing to voter coercion have been used to raise turnout and guarantee a win for Medvedev.

In Moscow, observers from the Communist Party (KPRF) noted a difference between the number of voters who came to polling station No. 2881 and the number of votes the station had recorded. According to Anna Novolodskaya, a candidate to the local municipal assembly, electoral officials listed 108 extra votes.

Ilya Yashin, the leader of the “Yabloko” youth wing, revealed that one of their activists was given the chance to vote five times in Russia’s capital. Dmitri Volov, who resides in the northern city of Murmansk, went to seven polling stations, and explained to electoral staff that he didn’t have time to take out an absentee ballot from his hometown, but that he desperately wanted to vote for Dmitri Medvedev. Only two voting places told Volov that voting without an absentee ballot was illegal. The other five happily issued the activist a ballot.

In another Moscow district, Northern Butovo, the Yabloko press-service revealed that some 30% of votes were cast by absentee ballot. When asked, young people who voted this way explained that they were paid 200 rubles for each ballot cast.

Another common practice has been nicknamed the “carousel.” Sergei Dovgal, a candidate to the local municipal assembly, explained what he saw in the North and North-East Moscow precincts: Between two to seven buses full of students and residents of Moscow’s suburbs drive between voting stations. The passengers approach an electoral representative, showing their passports, which have a mark of identification – in this case, a pencil check mark in the box showing marital status. The official then notes down each passenger’s last name, then hands then a voting ballot. The whole procedure then continues at the next polling station.

Coercion of students, hospital patients, and soldiers was also recorded. Military cadets in one St. Petersburg academy were instructed who to vote for up to a month in advance, according to an anonymous source. The source explained that during the vote, the cadets were forced to take their ballots and complete them in front of a commanding officer.

In the south-western city of Voronezh, both cadets and military units were taken to a school that contained two polling stations. According to a KPRF monitor, the soldiers were allowed to vote once at each station.

Residents of one dormitory of the Russian State University for the Humanities were also compelled to vote in the presidential election. Students told the Sobkor®ru news agency that a faculty director came on the building announcement system, and commanded students to “perform their constitutional obligation.” He noted that the directive came from the University president, Yefim Pivovar, and that students should vote before 1 PM. Faculty vice-deans then walked door-to-door in the residence hall, telling students that they would not leave the building until all registered students voted.

Monitors from the Communist Party in St. Petersburg stopped one woman from dropping 27 filled-out ballots into the ballot box, according to ZAKS.ru. After a brief conversation with militsiya officers, the woman was released.

Electoral monitors also discovered neatly stacked packets of ballots resting in ballot boxes, even before polling stations opened. At polling station No. 1513, one observer, Roman Udot, demanded that ballot boxes be opened and the packets removed. Each of the slips was marked off in favor of Dmitri Medvedev. Thankfully, Udot’s persistence means that the ballots there will be disqualified. Still, that didn’t keep electoral officials from trying to negotiate with the observer. Before the militsiya arrived to investigate, they offered to remove most of the ballots and leave just “two to three ballots in each box.”

Some Moscow polling stations were using other methods to distract observers. In the Chertanovo district, officials set up a special room for monitors at several stations. The room contained food, beer, wine, vodka, and cognac. Representatives of the electoral commission were insistent that monitors come into the room and enjoy themselves.

In Novosibirsk, the mayor’s office was offering a reward to the school whose polling stations counted the largest number of voters. According to the KPRF, the top school would receive 100 thousand rubles.

Electoral monitors also reported being kept from participating in vote counts, and being told to keep their distance from where ballots were being counted. By electoral law, observers must be kept no further than two meters from the vote counting table.

International electoral monitors have decided to wait until the vote is completed to release their reports, which should be published in the coming days. Their experiences may reveal even more about the way this presidential election was managed.

Gennady Zyuganov, the candidate from the Communist Party, has already promised to dispute the election’s results. “We have evidence of electoral fraud, and we will take legal recourse,” he told reporters.

According to the Golos Association, which maintains a hotline for reports of voter fraud, the practice is widespread. The group reported that they had taken calls from universities, hospitals and social institutions around Russia. Voters were frequently told, both implicitly and explicitly, to vote for Dmitri Medvedev.

The outcome of the election, set to take place on March 2nd, is all but decided. Dmitri Medvedev, who carries an endorsement from President Vladimir Putin, is favored by a wide margin. Yet it appears that authorities were concerned that low voter turnout could call the election’s legitimacy into question, and were using any means necessary to raise it.

As The Moscow Times reported, much of the pressure stemmed from local authorities, apparently attempting to curry favor from the presidential administration.

Kremlin critics have charged that absentee ballots were used in past elections to falsify results.

According to Russia’s Central Electoral Commission, some 2 million 400 thousand absentee ballots were distributed by February 27th. A total of 2 million 600 thousand were printed.

By comparison, 2 million 400 thousand absentee ballots were printed before the December 2nd State Duma election. Of those, only 1 million 350 thousand were claimed by citizens.

The press-service explained: “The “Petrovsky district” of St. Petersburg has decided to not to limit itself to 1 ruble [(€.028 or $.04)] electoral pies [filled with] red bilberry, apples, and meat. The District head will appear in a fitting guise. A lottery with great prizes given out by a baby-mammoth-Olympian [the mascot of the 2014 Olympics planned for Sochi, Russia] – that’s another surprise residents of the northern capital will receive at the District’s polling stations. And the gorgeous cheerleaders will keep their end up. They will be issuing VIP invitations to the International Cheerleading Tournament, to be held in April of this year, to all young voters.”

Posters for the event noted that voters needed to pick up an absentee ballot and vote at one of the polling stations in the municipal district in order to receive their small pie or cheerleading ticket.

Voting by absentee ballots has grown incrementally in recent elections, and was widely used in December 2nd State Duma elections to raise voter turnout. The widest number of falsification charges were related to voting with this method, with some voters claiming they were forced to fill out their ballot in the presence of employers or officials. In other instances, students and factory workers were bussed between polling stations and issued absentee ballots to vote several times.

Read a detailed account of pressure on voters in Nizhny Novgorod from the New York Times.

The ballots will be distributed by regional and local branches of the Commission until March 1st. According to a representative, the CEC has prepared 2.6 million absentee ballots for the election, or 100 thousand more than during the 2004 presidential contest.

The slips feature new security measures, such as space for a voter’s passport information, and an area to write in the specific polling station where the voter is registered.

But some activists and political experts charge that the absentee ballots are still easily abused. During the December 2nd, 2007 State Duma elections, record numbers of complaints were registered from voters pressured to use the ballots. Managers at numerous companies were reportedly forcing workers to register as an absentee, and later vote under their scrutiny at the workplace. Students accused instructors of doing the same.

Incidences where management attempted to threaten employees by taking pictures of their voting ticket were also repeatedly put on record.

On November 30th, an investigation completed by the Other Russia revealed one scheme that would have helped the “party of power”. In Moscow, voters were given the chance to vote several times at any number of polling stations, as long as they announced their support for the pro-Kremlin United Russia party and signed a corresponding statement. Absentee ballots were not required or collected.

Experts have marked widespread violations during the State Duma electoral campaign and early voting period, and suspect that the United Russia party attempted to falsify the results in its favor.