Amidst numerous reports of ballot stuffing, censorship, destruction of campaign material, and – most commonly – fraudulent usage of absentee ballots, more candidates from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party won their campaigns than any others. The most successful runners-up included candidates from the Communist Party, the Kremlin-loyal A Just Russia party, and the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.

Yevgeny Shevchenko of the Patriots of Russia opposition party said that the winner for city with the most absentee ballot violations was Chelyabinsk, where a whopping 40,000 such ballots were issued.

An example from regional Yabloko party leader Igor Yermolenko in Samara helps to demonstrate why committing fraud with absentee ballots in Russia is disturbingly simple. Speaking to the Kasparov.ru news portal, Yermolenko said that a group of people at one Samara polling station left with 40 blank absentee ballots despite only handing applications for 19. The regulations for recording how many ballots were taken was ignored altogether.

Grigory Melkoniants, head of the independent Russian electoral watchdog Golos, confirmed to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the elections were as dirty as in March.

“We recorded a whole series of violations on all levels of the elections, from the moment the campaign began to the counting of the votes, from buying votes to ballot-stuffing,” said Melkoniants. He added that the organization had video footage of people being paid for their votes.

Other startling violations included forcing university students to sign off on a list that they had voted for United Russia candidates and driving busloads of voters to multiple polling stations.

Despite the violations, some of Russia’s opposition parties were able to achieve relative success in some regions. According to Central Electoral Commission head Vladimir Churov, candidates from Yabloko, Patriots of Russia, and Right Cause won 167 mandates in Sunday’s elections. That number is markedly higher than the 27 mandates won by candidates from those parties in regional elections last March.

Boris Nemtsov, co-leader of the opposition movement Solidarity and one of the founding members of the newly-formed coalition For Russia Without Tyranny or Corruption, remarked on his blog about United Russia’s overall success in the elections:

“Every nation is befit of its government. Therefore, either our nation consists of traitors and thieves, or the elections weren’t actually elections,” he said. “I’m convinced that the second hypothesis is much closer to the truth than the first one.”

Gennady Gudkov, State Duma Deputy from A Just Russia

In conditions where there’s hydrochloric acid in the pool, it’s going to be difficult to win, considering that our opponent is swimming with paddles in clean water, and we’re in a pool of hydrochloric acid. With the kind of administrative and bureaucratic support that United Russia has, it’s going to be difficult to compete with the party in power. The elections are very dirty – dirtier than in March. In Chelyabinsk, for example, federal employees are being forced to vote in several different areas. We’ve been informed about this.

We’re counting on victory in the municipal elections of a number of outer-Moscow cities and on good results in several regions. If the elections were even a tad bit honest, United Russia would have joined the opposition long ago.

Sergei Mitrokhin, Yabloko Party Leader

It’s difficult to make predictions in our electoral process. I think there’s going to be ballot-stuffing in United Russia’s favor everywhere. How many will be stuffed, nobody knows. If it’s too few, then the governors, mayors, and regional administrative leaders will be risking their posts.

During the March campaign, we had good results in Tula in the Tverskaya region. There’s a positive trend, but there are no grounds at all to say that the elections will be honest. There’s going to be massive absentee voting in Chelyabinsk.

Boris Nadezhdin, Political Council Member of Right Cause

In the places where our tickets had good chances, they were removed [from the ballots]. This happened, for example, in Kazan and Kostroma. We have tickets left in Magadan and Chelyabinsk; I’m counting more on Chelyabinsk. Because first of all, a very scandalous campaign is going on in Chelyabinsk, and secondly, we are participating alongside Yabloko, and that means the chances of either party winning decrease considerably.

Andrei Andreyev, State Duma Deputy from the Communist Party

Currently I’m in Magadan, working on the elections. The electoral campaign is extraordinarily dirty and cynical. Magadan television, and the channel MTK in particular, is heaping utter garbage onto the three parliamentary parties besides United Russia.

Ilya Yashin, Solidarity Bureau Member

It wouldn’t be right to talk about the chances of the candidates, since this country has long since ceased to have elections, and instead there’s an appointment process reminiscent of elections only in appearance.

Candidates from the non-systemic opposition can participate in elections in order to hurt the government’s reputation, but they can only achieve success in the case that the system malfunctions – as happened, for example, in Tver and several other regions.

Yevgeny Shevchenko, Representative of the Patriots of Russia:

We see the chances of our regional branches in participation in the elections positively, since they accomplished very good work. However, the news from the regions gives some cause for alarm. We are cautious about the fact that party tickets were taken off the ballots for unsubstantiated reasons. We have fewer complaints than in previous years. Clearly, the regional authorities have finally listened to the president and have begun to create the conditions for competition in the regions, but there is lawlessness in the municipal elections in a whole swath of regions.

Sergei Ivanov, State Duma Deputy from the LDPR:

I see the chances for the LDPR in the elections as very good. We’ve been up against the administration’s resources since 1989, and we always find our voters.

Aleksandr Khitshteyn, State Duma Deputy from United Russia:

I can only say what work I do, and I’m in charge of elections in Samara. I’m convinced that United Russia candidates will get the majority of the mandates in city duma elections. As far as the elections for mayor are concerned, I’m convinced that Dmitri Azarov will win – what’s more, in the first round. The campaign has been sufficiently calm. Naturally, what’s unpleasant is the use of administrative resources by the current mayor, Victor Tarkhov.

As of Sunday night, official results of the elections had not yet been released.

The elections are widely being seen as a test of President Dmitri Medvedev’s stated desire to reform the country’s electoral system. Election observers and opposition parties were vehement in their denouncement of last October’s regional elections, which were fraught with accusations of blatant and widespread fraud and in which United Russia was overwhelmingly successful. The president refused to annul the elections, but he later made several proposals for reform, saying that United Russia “needs to learn how to win in an open fight.”

The prognosis so far is not very good. Reports of violations for the March 14 elections began pouring in during early voting before the elections even began. According to the Kasparov.ru online newspaper, the liberal Yabloko party was banned from running in legislative elections in every region of the country. Golos, Russia’s primary independent electoral watchdog, summarized the violations that had been reported throughout the day on Sunday: “unauthorized persons present at the polling stations, limiting the rights of voters, observers, the mass media and members of electoral commissions, as well as numerous cases of organized voting with absentee ballots, transportation of voters to polling stations, and bribing voters in some regions.”

The list of reported violations includes many that Golos is calling “typical” and that have been noted in Russian elections for years. Sunday’s reports that companies, universities, and the military have organized expeditions to voting stations and forced their members to vote for United Russia are nearly identical to reports from during Russia’s presidential election in 2008. Similar, too, was abuse of the absentee ballot system: Russians are not allowed to vote by mail, and instead are allowed to cast an absentee ballots at any polling station that they chose. Historically, the system has enabled widespread violations.

Below is a sampling of Golos’ 461 recorded allegations of voter fraud and electoral violations.

• Ostrogozhsk. Journalist Oleg Demidov from the Grazhdansky Golos newspaper was attacked by three unknown assailants who broke his camera. The police refused to detain the assailants and instead took Demidov to the police station. Additionally, photographs of United Russia candidates had been hung on the walls of several of the town’s voting stations.

• Yekaterinburg. Workers at the Uralmash machine manufacturer were transported to voting stations and ordered by their managers to vote for United Russia. It is worth noting that Uralmash’s largest stockholder is Gazprombank, which is owned by the government-controlled oil giant Gazprom.

• Yekaterinburg. Workers at the Pnevmostroymashina factory were ordered to vote for United Russia by absentee ballot at a polling station designated by the company, and to photograph their ballot while they were in the voting booth to show to management the next day.

• Berezovsky. A bus was observed carrying voters from the nearby city of Yekaterinburg who came to the town, voted by absentee ballot and then left.

• Ivanovo. Fifty students at the Ivanovo Academy of Chemistry complained that the school had ordered them “to fulfill your constitutional right to vote early” and vote on March 11 for United Russia. They were also told “not to tempt fate, and, in the case that you don’t vote for the designated candidate, not to hope for a favorable attitude towards you in the future. Political myopia will be the basis for your expulsion from the university and troubles of a similar perspective.”

• Astrakhan. Unknown persons parked a car next to a polling station that was located nearby a building known for its beleaguered residents, and were distributing vodka in exchange for pledges of votes. The report did not specify what party the residents were asked to vote for.

• Krasnodarsky Krai. A banner printed with “United Russia” was hung above the entrance to a voting station. According to the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, vodka and other hard liquor was being sold under the banner.

• Tula. After the fact, votes were noticed to have been cast by people known to be dead. Observers also noted that 500 ruble (about $17) coupons were being distributed to people in exchange for their promises to vote for United Russia. Additionally, journalists were barred from entering voting stations, and election observers were forced off the grounds of the local electoral commission.

• Ryazan. Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) candidate Yevgeny Dronov attempted to intervene when he saw people paying voters to cast their ballots for United Russia candidate Oleg Maslyuk. Immediately afterwards, several young men jumped out of an approaching car and began to beat him. The police officer who arrived at the scene refused to detain the assailants, failing even to ask for their identification.

• Ryazan. In an apparent attempt to humiliate the LDPR, unknown agitators were seen handing out bags of groceries printed with the LDPR logo.

• Yekaterinburg. Vladimir Mostovshchikov, electoral commission representative for of Sverdlovskaya region, announced on a local television channel that voters holding temporary registrations should feel free to vote wherever they wanted to even without using absentee ballots – which is illegal. He later attempted to deny that he said this, but Golos maintains that they have proof of the statement.

• Irkutsk. A court decision on Friday evening eliminated one of the main electoral candidates, but the candidate’s name was unable to be removed from the ballot in time. Voters and electoral commissioners alike were confused as a result.

• Omsk. Journalists were barred from entering a number of polling stations, and some were confined to areas designated for the media from which it was impossible to observe the electoral commission’s work. Despite this, journalists did note several instances of ballot stuffing.

The newspaper quoted Sergei Filatov, leader of the liberal Yabloko party, as having obtained photographs and video of how the votes were paid for: In a car parked next to a voting station in Tula School #52, unknown persons wrote down voters’ information and then paid them in cash after completing the early voting process.

According to Filatov, voters were given 500 rubles (about $17) to vote for United Russia, and 100 rubles ($3.40) to vote for A Just Russia, an opposition party loyal to the Kremlin.

Some voters had complained that they did not receive the money promised to them after voting, since the car had taken off by the time they were done. Other witnesses have filed statements with the local police bureau confirming that a massive campaign to buy up votes was apparently underway. Yabloko, meanwhile, is preparing to file a complaint with the regional electoral committee.

Moreover, a Kommersant correspondent reported that agitators from United Russia had come to his house the day before, offering 300 rubles ($10.24) to vote for their party.

The news is the latest in a number of controversial incidents involving the upcoming elections. A number of opposition parties have been altogether banned from ballot in various cities, and others have been facing pressure from the Central Electoral Commission.

Regional elections are set to take place throughout Russia on March 14, and follow last October’s scandalous regional elections that triggered an unprecedented walkout by opposition party leaders in the State Duma in light of widespread allegations of voter fraud. President Dmitri Medvedev admitted at the time that the elections were “not sterile,” but refused to annul them all the same.

“You cannot promise everything to everyone all at once,” the prime minister told party leadership at a meeting on Friday. “You can’t turn into promisers who make promises only in order to pull the wool over people’s eyes, force their way into government agencies, and then just deal with their own problems.”

Putin asserted that the party needed to learn how to explain to voters what problems are faced by regional governments, and also how to prove to them that United Russia proposes the most effective solutions to these problems.

Putin’s warning comes a week after Russia’s largest anti-government rally in years, when 12 thousand protesters gathered in Kaliningrad last Saturday to demand the resignations of Kaliningrad Governor and United Russia member Georgy Boos and Prime Minister Putin. Every political party in the region besides United Russia participated in the rally.

United Russia is the largest and most powerful political party in Russia, and has held nearly a complete monopoly on government offices at every level throughout the country since its inception in 2001. It has been accused of rigging elections countless times, including the last set of regional elections in October when the representatives of three opposition (though largely Kremlin-loyal) parties walked out of the State Duma in protest of the blatantly fraudulent results.