He also said, however, that the election results did indeed “reflect citizens’ political party preferences.”

These comments follow Medvedev’s weekend meeting with leaders both from opposition parties and parties normally loyal to the Kremlin. Despite being presented with 120 counts of electoral fraud, he stated that the election results would not be annulled. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) and close Putin ally, was a surprising critic of the elections. According to Zhirinovsky, the president stated that election annulments “do not, in principle, happen anywhere in the world, and that the situation has to do with the fact that we must use the judicial process – and we are using it in full force.”

Medvedev did agree that the elections had not been ideal.

Boris Gryzlov, Chairman of the Supreme Council of Putin’s United Russia party, said that by having the meeting, Medvedev had “fulfilled his constitutional role as guarantor of the Constitution.” He proposed that anyone in disagreement over the election results turn to the courts, stressing that there should not be any “political disorder.”

Medvedev requested at the beginning of the meeting that party representatives not turn the discussion into a funeral for democracy. “I intentionally dressed darkly today, thinking that, who knows, you all might be in the mood for a funeral,” said the president.

Deputies from LDPR, A Just Russia, and the Communist party walked out of an October 14 session of the State Duma in a sign of contempt at the election results of October 11. However, after a telephone call with the president the next day, LDPR and A Just Russia agreed to return to their posts; the Communist party returned for the sake of budget discussion.

Elections took place on October 11 in Moscow and 75 other regions of Russia for officials on various levels of government. They delivered sweeping wins for United Russia across the country, continuing the political monopoly it has held since its conception in 2001. Observers noted massive electoral violations, including ballot stuffing and multiple voting with the same absentee ballot.

In Moscow, the majority of opposition candidates had been banned from the ballot. Widespread electoral fraud quickly became clear and has now been statistically documented. Numerous incontrovertible examples highlight the unabashed nature of these violations – opposition party Yabloko, for one, received no votes even at the polling station where its leader, Sergei Mitrokhin, had voted.

Nikolai Levichev, who leads the Just Russia fraction in the State Duma, said his party’s observers noticed the faulty pens in 6 polling places in the southern city of Volgograd.  Levichev showed journalists videotape from one polling center that seemed to back his assertion.

In the video, an older pensioner fumbles near the ballot box, suddenly noticing that her ballot selection has disappeared, leaving her with a blank slip.

The pensioner turns to an incredulous election worker, who uses a pen from the ballot booth to write “I don’t believe you,” on the ballot.  Several minutes later, the phrase fades from sight, much to the surprise of astonished onlookers.

A ballot count later found 285 invalid slips at the polling place, most of them blank.  A recount, conducted upon request from a local candidate from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, was even more shocking.  Conducted on March 8th, the recount found an extra 206 votes for the United Russia party.  Levichev asserts that ballots that were initially blank now had “writing and graphical representations made with the same handwriting.”  In such a way, United Russia may have been trying to make a safety net and ensure that it received a certain percent of votes in the election, Levichev said.

Just Russia is not the first party to assert that disappearing ink was used in the recent elections.  The two other parties in Parliament, the Russian Communist Party (CPRF) and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), expressed identical concerns.  “Our observers recorded similar violations in tens of polling stations in the [Volgograd] oblast,” said Sergei Ivanov, an LDPR deputy.

Russia’s Central Electoral Commission (CEC), which oversees elections, said that using invisible ink did not formally violate any laws, suggesting that the tactic was a sort of loophole.  As of yet, the Commission had not formally looked into the allegations.

CEC member Igor Borisov told Gazeta.ru that electoral law dictates that polling stations must contain a pen, but that the law does not define what the composition of the ink must be.

“Although truth be told, we understand a pen to be a means of writing, whose mark does not rub off,” he clarified.  “That is to say, for instance, it can’t be a pencil.”

Just Russia says it will consider all its options in the near future, and that it is prepared to take the matter to court.  They’re probably hoping the case won’t simply disappear.