Thread by @samagreene

So, just over 24-hours into Russia's three-day electoral bonanza, and it's going more or less as you might have expected. TL;DR: The Kremlin's not taking its chances.

A few observations follow, with the caveat that info is thus far limited, and there are still 2 days to go.

/1

First: There are widespread reports of what can best be described as shenanigans. These don't have the feel of a massive, centrally coordinated falsification campaign, but they do feel like a massive uncoordinated falsification wave. Pick your poison.

/2

golosinfo.org/articles/145485

In this context - and before proceeding - it's worth re-re-upping a point re-upped by @Ben_H_Noble in @MoscowTimes: Russian authoritarianism often operates through decentralized proactive compliance, rather than centralized control and coercion.

/3

themoscowtimes.com/2021/09/10/vot…

Third: Given these shenanigans, it's hard to take the official turnout figures (~17% in person, 60% on line) at face value. In recent cycles, turnout manipulation has emerged as they key tool of election management in Russia. Expect this round to be no different.

/4

Fourth: If the Kremlin does have a central focus in this election, it's making sure the @navalny/@leonidvolkov #SmartVoting project fails. And, for the most part, the Kremlin is getting its way.

/5

Everyone, of course, has seen the news that @Google and @Apple pulled the Smart Voting app from their systems (in Russia), under threat of criminal prosecution of their local staff.

/6

nytimes.com/2021/09/17/wor…

Team Navalny had been relying on @telegram as a backup for getting supporters the info they need to coordinate their votes, until @durov announced today that he was blocking the automated channels that Volkov et al were using.

/7

meduza.io/en/news/2021/0…

The underlying data for the system has now made its way to various servers - including Wikipedia - but centralized, easy to find and read distribution of Smart Voting guidance has effectively been disrupted.

/8

https://twitter.com/adagamov/status/1439123939972812802

Fifth: We don't seem - yet - to be seeing what many observers most feared: a massive, Belarus-style Internet blackout. Of course, a lot of the censorship was done well before the elections kicked off. But there could have been more.

/9

In particular, observers had predicted the large-scale blockage of @Google and @Cloudflare DNS servers, after Roskomnadzor tested its ability to do so just a couple days prior to the elex.

/10

novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/…

There had also been at least some expectation that access to @Facebook, @Twitter and @YouTube would be severely limited or blocked altogether.

Thus far (and there's 2 days to go), none of that has happened.

/11

And so, Sixth: The Kremlin seems satisfied that its combination of centralized anti-Navalny disruption and de-centralized "proactive compliance" by local elex managers will do the trick.

The question is, what's the trick?

/12

As usual, getting a constitutional majority (or something very close to it) is at the top of the Kremlin's wish list, and it should (just) be achievable. As @Stanovaya writes, too many careers are riding on it for this to fail.

/13

carnegiemoscow.org/commentary/853…

But everything we've seen thus far points to an equally important priority for Team Putin: Making sure Team Navalny fails. Losing even a single "safe" seat to a #SmartVoting candidate would feel unthinkable. The Kremlin needs SmartVoting to be an abject failure.

/14

Presumably, elex managers on the ground know that, but they're not magicians. The chances of at least one district handling the opposition a moral victory are not negligible. And a moral victory is all the opposition is after.

/END

And yes, I know I skipped "second". It's before 9am on a Saturday. My quant driver hasn't booted yet.