Too few valid signatures is the ostensible reason, but Nadezhdin says a huge overage was collected.
Here is the story from CNN.
Too few valid signatures is the ostensible reason, but Nadezhdin says a huge overage was collected.
Here is the story from CNN.
Here is Nadezhdin campaign website
http://nadezhdin2024.ru
Use Chrome or another browser that supports translation.
The website details the reasons signatures were rejected, which sound similar to what be claimed in Chicago.
Nadezhdin collected over 200,000 signatures. Russian law only counts 2500 signatures from any region (83 in Russia). It also only permits submission of 105,000 signatures, so 95% must be valid.
Is there a breakdown of how many signatures he got from each region?
I seem to recall that even in the bad old days of the USSR, voters could cross out the names of candidates that they wanted to blackball. If cross-outs exceeded the votes cast for any candidate, their election was voided, and a new election held withhold them.
Is this still the case in the Russian Federation?
@WZ,
If you click on Signatures at the top of the page it has a regional breakdown.
HOW MANY COMPUTER CODE INFECTIONS JUST BY LOOKING AT ANY RUSSIAN WEBSITE ???
ESP IF HAVE WINDOWS SYSTEM ???
Nadezhdin – HOW SOON DEAD ???
I would defer to Max on this.
@ JR:
His webpage is in Russian.
@WZ,
If you use Chrome as your browser, you can have it translate into English. Or if you use Google Translate you can enter the link to a web page. This method will only do one level of translation so you might have to enter the second level into Google translate as well. Or if you know how to transliterate Cyrillic into Latin/English characters you should be able to make sense of the table which is mainly region names (Oblasts, Republics, Okrugs, Cities, etc.).
@WZ,
The first page has been changed removing the link, but this works.
https://nadezhdin2024.ru/signatures
On the first page he pledges to appeal the decision of the Central Election Commission to the SCOTRF (Supreme Court of the Russian Federation)
I prefer to read the page in Russian, although I might try to see how good the English translation is at some point, provided there’s one universal English translation and not a myriad of them.
There are 89 regions in Russia. Six if them are not recognized as part of Russia by the United States. They are, nevertheless, eligible for signature collection.
Speaking of translation, what does “he claimed in Chicago” mean?
I’m currently using the Brave browser in a mobile phone. At the bottom of the page is a button which allows me to view an English translation. However, I have no way of knowing whether this is the same English translation you are seeing or not.
Sorry, I meant “be claimed in Chicago,” in reference to Jim Riley’s second comment above. I’m aware that the city of Chicago has a reputation for dirty political machinations in the US, although I thought that had more to do with events that took place decades ago than current events.
…Similar to what be claimed in Chicago isn’t proper modern American English, but what is it? Typo? Ebonics or jive, used humorously? Something else?
I only ask because I don’t understand the actual meaning intended. I obviously make typos, and sometimes joke around, so I wouldn’t ask if the intent wasn’t “lost in translation.”
Jim, I’m fairly sure 95% do not have to be valid. Although I admittedly don’t fully understand the process, I think that by the time signatures are submitted, invalid signatures should already be removed, or not included in that count to start with.
When the count by region was posted on that site, some regions showed numbers far in excess of 2,500, including some over 7,000, if not even higher. Why would they continue to collect or accept signatures in those regions if they couldn’t then select the 2,500 best among them for submission somehow?
The problem might be that their distribution was so lopsided, which, to be fair, is not in any way surprising. Presuming they ended up with at least 2.500 in each of at least 40 regions, based on what I remember of their numbers from when their breakdown by region was posted, some of those must have been too marginally above the minimum to select 2,500 they felt confident in.
I can’t offer any retroactive suggestions; perhaps cutting off regions where they were far in excess and making a greater effort where they were barely above or below the region’s requirements was an option, or perhaps they did everything they could in each region and further redeployment of resources wasn’t a real option.
John, what precisely do you want to defer to me on? If you have any questions, please ask, and I’ll do what I can to provide answers.
I’d advise not automatically believing anything reported by CNN, although I haven’t looked at what they reported about this story in particular.
Malinkovich appears to have not made it either. Of course, this site makes no note of that, or of any other candidates who attempted to qualify by petition. It only has multiple articles about Duntsova and Nadezhdin.
It currently seems I was way off on my projection of number of candidates. It’s currently all the way down to 4, at best maybe 5 if Nadezhdin wins his court appeal. I expected the usual 7 or 8.
Zhirinovsky is, sadly, no longer with us. Rada Russkikh, rather unsurprisingly but, nevertheless, sadly as well failed to qualify. Putin doesn’t look like he’ll need my vote. With a bunch of boring candidates and the outcome not exactly in doubt, I think I’ll sit this one out.
If I think of a creative way to protest the absurdity of electing a chief executive of a 9 figure population entity by casting a vote, I might do that, but the commie, Slutsky, Davankov, plus the President? I see no real reason to bother.
Nadezhdin says a huge overage was collected. That’s true, but he needed better regional distribution.
He wasn’t actually that far off, once regional distribution is factored in. The Supreme Court could accept his claims, or not.
It’s disingenuous to say that he had over 200k so he should qualify regardless of the regional breakdown. Regional breakdown is part of the law.
The law provides for 1)qualification through the nomination of a party with parliamentary representatives or 2) qualification through the nomination of a registered political party without parliamentary representatives, through signatures which show a certain base level of support in enough different regions to demonstrate a truly nationwide movement or 3) qualification without the nomination of any party, with a higher number of signatures and the same geographic distribution requirement, 4) I think there’s also registering a new party, and then see 2.
You can quibble that the geographic distribution is too severe, etc, but suppose you had a candidate with a million signatures in Moscow and none anywhere else. That would be way more signatures than Nadezhdin, but would such a candidate really belong on ballots in every region? Geographic distribution at some level is justifiable, whether you agree with the details or not.
By way of comparison, an independent candidate for US President needs how many signatures to qualify for all ballots in the US? Now, what if that same candidates had twice as many signatures in half as many states?
Perhaps Russia could allow different candidates to qualify in different regions, like the U.S., but he’s running for president of the whole country, so it makes sense, at least in concept, for the whole country to have the same presidential options on the ballot. And, for those candidates to have demonstrated support in many different parts of the country.
CNN might gloss over such points, but this site, of all places, should dig into those details instead of just uncritically echoing their obvious propaganda. After all, both the blog post author and many of his readers would be intimately familiar with such issues.
@MaxZ,
I likely meant “would be”. Incidentally, Bill Redpath is from Illinois. He was the Libertarian Candidate for US Senator in 2022. His use of “ostensible” indicates skepticism.
There are still shenanigans with respect to petitions in Illinois. In Illinois a petition has to be challenged, and then the board of elections makes a decision. Here are some of the challenges this year.
https://www.theillinoize.com/articles/state-board-elections-rulings-expected
The Illinois Board of Elections had challenges but not the actual decisions that I can find.
A few years ago there was a college student who decided to run for Chicago city council, and personally circulated his own petition. The political bosses did not like that. In Illinois a voter may withdraw their name from a petition. Some over-exuberant ward heelers circulated what was effectively an anti-petition, and gathered 10,000 signatures of voters who swore that they had signed the student’s petition, but now wanted to withdraw. The student’s petition had 2000 signatures (I am not recalling the actual numbers but it was something as ridiculous). The challengers argued that some of the voters most have told the truth. There is not public access to a petition until it is filed, and perhaps until the deadline, so challengers have to get the petition and then scrutinize it for “errors”. In this case they couldn’t know who had signed the original petition – and gone and knocked on the signer’s door. The challengers were so embarrassed they dropped the challenge.
Mike Madigan was a very powerful politician in Illinois, even though he was only elected as state representative. His district in Chicago was increasingly becoming Hispanic, and a Hispanic candidate decided to run in the primary against him. In Illinois, a candidate can either file in Chicago where most of the people live, or in Springfield, where the capital is. The challenger filed in Springfield just before the filing deadline. An agent for Madigan was in the lobby, and when he saw that the challenger was there, he walked over and filed petitions for two Hispanic candidates, so as to split any vote.
Alice Palmer was the State Senator for Barack Obama’s district. She said she was going to challenge Mel Reynolds for Congress who was under indictment for sexual assault and sexual abuse. Jesse Jackson, Jr. was supposed to run for Illinois Senate, but instead ran for Congress. Barack Obama decided to run for the Senate seat.
Reynolds was convicted and then resigned, triggering a special election in November 1995 between Palmer and Jackson, Jr., which Jackson, Jr. won. Palmer said she was uncertain whether she was going to run in the regular primary election in March 1996. Obama had filed for the Senate seat, and at the last minute Palmer filed for re-election to her Senate seat. Obama challenged her petition and she was knocked off the ballot, and Obama was unopposed for the nomination.
Jackson, Jr. was central to the downfall of Rod Blagojevich. Blagojevich was governor when Obama was elected governor and resigned his US Senate seat. Blagojevich had authority to appoint an interim senator, and allegedly tried to sell the seat to Jackson, Jr. Blagojevich was later convicted of bribery, as well as other crimes, and sent to prison. The conviction for selling the senate seat was later vacated, and he was not retried.
Scott Lee Cohen was nominated to be Lieutenant Governor. In Illinois, at that time, Lieutenant Governor nominations were independent of those for governor, but the two ran as a tandem in the general election. Cohen had a somewhat sketchy past, and would have been an embarrassment for Pat Quinn who styled himself as a great reformer. Pat Quinn had ascended to the governorship after Blagojevich had been impeached and convicted. Cohen had won nomination with 22% of the vote.
Mike Madigan visited Cohen in a long black limousine, after which Cohen announced he was withdrawing, saying that he had been reminded about the future of he and his family. I always thought that it sounded like Cohen had been told that sometimes brake lines fail for some unknown reasons. Probably not true, but it was the wording. Cohen later decided to run for governor as an independent that fall.
@MaxZ,
Nadezhdin’s website says that 9207 signatures were rejected. Supposedly the CEC checked 60,000 signatures and found 15% invalid which would be 9000.
I’ll give the Google translation and my interpretation:
4 442 We challenge the graphologist’s conclusion in each case.
I interpret this to mean that they didn’t think the signature matched the signature on record. This implies either fraud or personation. If these were scattered, it likely means the signer’s signature had changed, or that the signature that the election authorities had was not representative. It is pretty unlikely that the Nadezhdin campaign would stick a fraudulent signature every 15 or so. In the US when this happens, someone has done several pages of fake signatures and hoped they wouldn’t get caught.
995 We analyze the “errors” in the part filled by the collector
These are typically gotcha type error. Perhaps the circulator was distracted and filled in their birth date rather than the date they filled in the sheet of paper. It probably does not mean that they really did not witness the signing.
858 “Inaccurate information about the voter” (according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs) Rostov-on-DoM: obvious errors in sheet recognition
I don’t know why this says Rostov-on-DoM rather than Rostov-on-Don. It kind of says that some sheets had been fed into a scanner that misread them.
360 Collector with the status of PRG (GAS “Elections”). Rechecking the statuses of the collectors
I don’t know what GAS “Elections” means or if it a Russian idiom.
787 Other reasons. We save every signature
“We save every signature” could mean that the campaign will prove every signature is valid, and thus saved, or they saved records.
In Illinois the challenger of a petition has to give a reason why they believe a signature is not valid. Their lawyers are going to throw everything at the wall and hope it sticks.
@MaxZ,
The campaign was limited to submitting 105,000 signatures. That means that the campaign would likely select the best signatures.
100,000 of 105,000 is 95.24%. I had thought it was so they could use sampling. You could sample 1000 signatures and pretty easily determine if to a very high probability (99.99%+) whether there were more than 95.24% valid, less than 95.24% valid, or indeterminate. In that case, you check another 1000.
It is not easy to check hand-written petitions. Is that a Л or П? Maybe there is a distinctive way used in Russian but they look a lot a like to be. If you guess wrong, you’re trying to figure out if the word is Lipetsk rather than Pskov.
Maybe the wrong ID number was written down.
But since they checked 60,000 maybe they did not use sampling – particularly since the claim is that 15% were invalid.
I think I would keep collecting. It sounds like they were able to collect from people who were residing outside their official domicile. If so, then you could collect a signature for Kursk at the Moscow office.
In addition, you would not want to risk people reading on social media that collection was stopping in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and that the rumor was that it was being stopped everywhere. It would also be good advertising to see 100s of signers queueing.
The campaign reported roughly 138K “sorted” in 34 regions with over 2500 “sorted”
The other 49 regions had about 32K “sorted”. Since they reported over 200K raw signatures, not all signatures were “sorted”. At the end, the second number showed 105,000 or so “selected”.
If we assume that once they had 2500 solid signatures in each of 34 regions and stopped sorting, that might mean they collected 168K in those regions, which is not an unreasonable 4.9K per region. That would produce 85K solid signatures.
They would need another 15K from the 32K collected in smaller regions.
5 regions had between 2K and 2.5K
4 regions had between 1.5K and 2.0K
2 regions had between 1.0K and 1.5K
7 regions had between 500 and 1K
15 regions had between 200 and 500
16 regions had between 0 and 200
Many of the regions are quite small. There were very few with larger population that fell far short (Perm with 901, Orenburg with 479)
Jim Riley, thank you for the trivia regarding Illinois politics. I haven’t had time to read all of it, but I understand your overall point that Chicago politics is still even more Byzantine and corrupt, particularly in relation to ballot access signature gathering, verification, and challenges, than it is in other places in the US, and that this notoriety is not merely historical.
I know what Nadezhdin’s website says. As previously mentioned, I have not read the English translations, much less compared whether the different English translations match. Since Russian is my first, primary, and native language, I’ve only read it in Russian. While I don’t have time currently to check for any possible minor errors in translation, my quick scan of your translation is that it’s at the least largely accurate.
I did not dispute any of what it says at any point. However, I speculated about the processing of signatures before they are submitted. A 15% rejection rate seems low for raw gathered signatures on a whole nationwide campaign, to speak nothing of 5%.
Thus, I speculated it’s possible that the campaign has the ability and incentives to purge invalid signatures itself, before they are submitted, and thus not have them count against the maximum number per region submitted to the CEC. However, that can only work if the purged count doesn’t bring region’s total below the minimum in so many regions that overall qualification becomes impossible.
If it does, the only remaining option is to submit inadequately purged signatures in at least some regions and hope that the validity of those is unusually high, or that the CEC will somehow fail to catch it. These don’t seem like very likely hopes.
They do use sampling. If the sample result is that a petition fails, a larger sample is taken.
I think perhaps you missed my point about whether it may have made sense to stop collecting in some regions. I start with the assumption that a campaign has limited resources of various kinds – signature gatherers, signature preverifiers if that is in fact a thing, money for travel, etc. That assumption seems to be a pretty safe one.
Next, I assume that, as you said, signatures for one region can legally be collected from voters of that region while they are physically in another region. This also seems like a fairly safe assumption, given that they were being gathered in foreign cities around the world from Russian citizens.
However, suppose 6,000 signatures have been gathered in Moscow, and there’s still time before the deadline to stop gathering. Do you then redeploy signature gatherers to other regions where the likelihood of ending up with enough valid signatures seems far less certain? How logistically easy or difficult would that be? I’m presuming that it would at the very least be legal, since it’s highly unlikely a gathering point in a foreign city would have signature gatherers/notaries from all the different regions which Russian citizens who find themselves in those foreign cities at signature gathering time might be from.
Supposing that physically redeploying some of those campaign resources wasn’t financially prohibitive, which may not be a safe assumption, I would have redeployed them. There might be other factors I’m not considering – reactions of local authorities to signature gatherers from outside their region, for example, or perhaps ill reputation a campaign might get by sending outsiders into regions to gather signatures there, etc.
The factors you mentioned seem to me to be relatively minor in comparison – certainly, you would run into voters of various other regions while gathering signatures in any given region, and people do misunderstand things on vk, odnoklasniki, et al, and then amplify misinformation.
However, a campaign can fairly adequately communicate that some regions have more than enough signatures already, whereas others are in far more peril, via its webpage and other accounts and communication methods. The process of finding people from regions other than where you are gathering seems far less efficient than moving your physical operations to the regions where you need signatures most, that is don’t already have far more than enough or so few that the likelihood of having sufficient numbers of valid signatures in that region before the deadline is remote.
From what I’ve gathered, such processes of ending active gathering before deadlines and redeployment of signature gathering infrastructure to where it’s calculated to be most likely to make an overall difference is already commonplace in US campaigns. We may not have yet developed a sufficient number of political operatives who understand how exactly that works. Or, perhaps the difference is financial, given we’re a less wealthy country on average. Maybe it was simply a bad decision on the part of the Nadezhdin campaign. Or perhaps something else altogether.
In general, I’ll pay much less attention to this election now. And most likely, abstain from voting.
It’s possible I might conceive over the next month of a way to better communicate the idea that electing (or having) a chief executive of a federation of hundreds of millions of people across a multitude of time zones is an absolutely terrible idea, so far beyond absurd that words are quite inadequate, than by abstaining. However, at the moment that possibility seems low.
I used to vote for Zhirinovsky precisely because his rants at times elevated absurdity to an artform. I didn’t take them seriously or laterally, and didn’t consider him likely to have a real chance of winning any of those elections. Until the election actually loomed, I thought it most likely I would vote for Putin this time around, as I now am more satisfied with him as opposed to other even remotely plausible alternatives than I was at any of those times.
More recently I pondered voting for Rada Russkikh as a protest against the absurdity of such elections. However, she failed to qualify, and most likely never really attempted it with any significant degree of seriousness.
Now, we’re stuck with four boring candidates and an election without any serious mystery as to the outcome. So why bother voting, particularly given such an absurd process can’t plausibly lead to anything good? By absurd process I don’t refer to our present Russian presidential election process in isolation. No relatively minor differences, such as between it and the equivalent US process, would come close to fixing the issue(s).
The Russian and US processes are each better than the other in various ways. But, we used to get 7-8 approved candidates in these things, which was my expectation this time as well. The end result, 4, indicates likely process or implementation changes that I wouldn’t consider beneficial.
The US and Russia would most benefit, in my opinion, from being broken down into component states, regions, territories, etc., and then being further broken down after that. We’ve at least made a start by dissolving the USSR. Hopefully that process will continue.
Regarding the lack of mystery regarding the election outcome, my personal, unscientific observation is that the president is in fact quite popular, and would win another term easily regardless of the presence or absence of any accepted, rejected, or disqualified candidates.
Western sources frequently claim our polls and elections are rigged, much as Russian sources frequently say about the US polls and elections, etc. However, my.personal sampling, unscientific but scattered across a number of regions and across a variety of demographic considerations such as age and income levels, is that Putin’s actual popularity is at roughly what polls indicate. I don’t believe anyone could win by any reasonable method of conducting or counting votes, or that this would have changed due to who all else is or isn’t on the ballot.
Errata: in final paragraph of my last comment before this one, anyone *else* ;
Final paragraph of the comment before that, ending active gathering before deadlines *in some places*..
Paragraph alluding to Zhirinovsky, laterally should be literally.
Nadezhdy na Nadezhdina nyet.
In a larger sense, true. If you mean his Supreme Court challenge in particular, I’ve not noticed any news of a ruling, if you mean to say there has been one.
If you mean he has no chance of a victory in that challenge, I don’t know how to assess those odds. I would agree he’d have no realistic chance of an actual election victory regardless.
The way I’ve heard what you expressed conveyed more comprehensively is: nadezhdy na Nadezhdina nyebelo, nyetu, y ne budit (there’s no hope in Nadezhdin, never was, and never will be). It’s perhaps an overstatement, but most likely essentially true.
Max, forgive me if you mentioned it elsewhere, but what did you think of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Putin?
Post a link to a transcript if you find one, I guess, if it’s important what I think about that. There’s a somewhat less infinitesimal chance I’ll form some opinion of it if that happens.
In general, I have a positive view of Carlson by comparison with other US based professional opinionstors of equivalent levels of name recognition / actual or potential audience, however accurately or inaccurately that’s measured now / etc.
My opinion of President Putin has improved in the past couple of years, as I’ve come to consider things I didn’t earlier about what all he is up against and what the alternatives in his absence would most likely realistically be, as opposed to what you, I, or anyone or any set of people wishes they would be.
My focus remains on other things. As I reiterated again today, the task facing any president of any country with the population level of the Russian Federation or larger, or even close to it, is far beyond the capabilities of any mortal human. Jesus Christ rejected Satan’s offer to consider anything comparable, and He was the only man to ever walk the Earth who was even theoretically capable.
I’m much more interested in a wide variety of things, ranging from long range political, religious and moral theory and history and philosophy to my personal family and businesses matters to the views of people with whom I can interact, ask questions, state my opinions and be likely to be heard and considered, etc., among many others, as opposed to anything which anyone in any such position might say in a public interview, regardless of the brilliance of the interviewer.
To whatever extremely low level I might nevertheless be interested in such an interview, perhaps only out of excessive desire to satisfy the curiosity of someone who might desire my opinion, the chance that it might hold my attention and continuous time availability is far higher in the written print format than any audiovisual one.
I have far too many things of the audiovisual sort pertaining to things which interest me more, are more time sensitive, need my attention specifically, or any combination thereof to realistically expect I’d watch something like that in one chunk at any point in, say, this millennium, were I to have such longevity. To expect that I’d watch it in multiple chunks, remember to get back to it, etc, is even far less likely, given my personal preferences and things I need to deal with.
Sorry, I obviously expressed that thought in far more words than it really needed, as I am far too often prone to do. Even as I try to explain my lack of availability in audiovisual formats, it’s not easy for me to adequately keep in mind the likely attention span of my audience when it comes to the written word.
@MaxZ,
Nadezhdin has filed his appeal to the Russian Supreme Court. There is now a link to it from the top of his campaign website. The brief is in PDF format which is not straightforward to translate. There are actually two lawsuits.
The first appears to say that the CEC did not not provide the analysis by which the graphologist concluded that certain signatures were declared invalid. Instead they just gave their conclusion in the form of a code. See paragraph 28 plus footnotes.
2516 Not dated by voter.
378 Information about voter not entered by voter or circulator.
1543 Last name, first name, patronym not entered by voter.
This could indicate that the date was not entered by the voter or anyone, or that the graphologist concluded that someone else had done so. It is possible that the date field was left empty, or that the date had been entered by someone else using a different pen. But it may be that the style of the writing was not consistent with the signature. In the United States a signature can be quite stylized, and it would be difficult if not impossible to decide whether hand printed information was by the same person.
In Texas, the only thing that is required to be in a voter’s hand is the signature. The hand printed name, address, birthdate or voter ID number can be entered by the circulator. In other States this might not be true.
It appears that some information such as the number from an internal passport may be entered by the circulator. I presume that the circulator must look at the passport or other document to verify that the signer is who he says he is.
I don’t know how common use of a patronym is in Russia. Perhaps in some informal cases it is not used. Maybe a literate person like MaxZ would use it automatically, while others might not realize it so.
The above 3 items total to 4,442 matching the number on Nadezhin’s website.
The last item of 123 appear to pertain to information that the circulator failed to enter. In Texas, petition sheets have room for 10 signatures. They also have a section where the circulator swears that they had followed procedure, had witnessed the signature, pointed out certain information.
The CEC does not really know whether Ivan Ivanovich signed the petition (or they would have to rely on surveillance or other methods). They have to rely in certain part on a claim made by the circulator.
I don’t fully comprehend the rest of the brief, but it might be saying that the CEC adopted certain procedures based on forms, that were not consistent with the underlying statutes/regulations. That is, there might be a regulation that the graphologist must document their conclusion that a signature was not dated by a voter, and not simply enter the code “14” on some form.
How would MaxZ date something? I would use 2/14/24 or 2/14/2024. MaxZ would likely use 14/2/2024 or perhaps 14 February 2024.
Note that the above reasons would be the kind of gotcha’s that would be used in a challenge in Illinois.
@MaxZ,
I don’t understand paragraph 22 of the Brief.
It says that 104,734 signatures were submitted, that 9,209 were found to be invalid, and that therefor 95,525 were found to be valid. That part makes sense.
But it also says that 60,000 signatures were verified. That does not make sense to me.
Is there some requirement that 60,000 signature must be matched with signatures in official records, while 100,000 must comply with requirements, but they don’t actually examine the signature?
@MaxZ,
The second lawsuit or second claim is associated with the appointment of circulators. The form required the region that the circulator worked in to be indicated, while the formal regulation has no such requirement.
The campaign according to regulation must formally identify Ivan Ivanovich as circulator; but the forms used by the CEC has a field for indicating which region that Ivan would work in. If the form says Moscow, and the circulator worked in Krasnodar, the CEC invalidated all the signatures from Krasnodar collected by the circulator.
The CEC invalidated 1767 signatures based on this.
@MaxZ,
The Supreme Court appears to have accepted the complaint. The documents are images of documents and I can’t easily translate them – I would have to OCR them and hope Cyrillic can be recognized.
There are meetings (hearings) on Thursday at 10:00 and 14:00.
@MaxZ,
This is the transcript.
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/vladimirputininterviewtuckercarlson.htm
@MaxZ,
There are not a great many regions in the 2000-3000 range. That is regions that did not quite reach the quota or had relatively small surplus.
19 of the 34 regions with over 2500 signatures had between 3500 and 5000 signatures. A healthy surplus but not really wasted.
So you have a couple of regions like Moscow (city) and St. Petersburg with a large overage. Tatarstan had the most with 10,144 – but those came in very late. Either communication between Kazan and Moscow was slow and the petitions had not been sent to HQ, or people in Tatarstan had a particular interest in Crimea. Perhaps a Nadezhdin administration would come to an agreement where the Russian forces withdraw from the Donbass, while the annexation of Crimea is recognized. This would permit more Tatars to be repatriated to Crimea.
If the circulators in Moscow and St. Petersburg had been deployed they might have gathered a few 1000 signatures elsewhere. Should a greater effort been put forth in Sverdlovsk (1517 signatures from a population of 4.2M) or Stavropol (2238 signatures from a population of 2.9M) or Perm (901 signatures from a population of 2.5M)? Sure but it was not a gross mistake.
@MaxZ,
The distribution requirements in Russia might be illegal in the USA (see Ogilvie decision regarding distribution of signatures in Illinois). Distribution requirements sound like a good idea, but might not be in practice.
Consider a State that required 10,000 signatures statewide, plus 1000 in each of the two congressional districts. The CD requirement is meaningless, if the State has a capacity to produce 10,000 surely more than 1000 would come from each district. It might make sense to collect 7000 from one district and 3000 from the other if there can be political as well demographic differences. It is easier to collect signatures in a more densely populated urban area than a rural area where you have to travel to dozens of small towns to collect a few signatures. But it is unlikely that 9300 from one and 700 would be possible.
Consider another State that required 10,000 signatures statewide, with at least 4000 from each congressional district. In achieving 4000 from both districts, more than 10,000 signatures statewide is quite likely.
Is it fair that Moscow city has more members of the Duma? So why shouldn’t it be allowed that more signatures can be gathered there?
@MaxZ,
The CEC has sent its responses, which are posted on the Nadezhdin website. They are images, so I can not translate.
I’ll try to make some time to wade through all that and help you as I can. I’m fairly busy with other things currently.
@MaxZ,
Videos of the hearing have been posted on Youtube with links from Nadezhdin’s website. Who is Rupormoscow?
I do not understand Russian so did not watch all of it. On the second video the hearing concludes at about 1h 40m, but then at the very end 2h 38m, Nadezhdin comes out of the building and speaks to reporters.
Do Muscovites not wear gloves? Perhaps -10 C in Moscow with a light snow. Nadezhdin uses a lot of hand gestures. Is that typical Russian?
In the first video the screen goes blank around 1h 40m, and then returns about 2h20m with the judges decision. Several people leave with what I interpret as a resigned posture. There may be a reading of the decision in the second case as well.
The cases were heard by a single judge (different judge in both cases). Wikipedia says that the Supreme Court has 115 justices, so different than SCOTUS. Nadezhdin’s website says that there will be appeals.
I got on the Supreme Court website
https://vsrf.ru/
And got into the search area, but couldn’t find anything about the cases.
@MaxZ,
The decisions of the hearings has been posted. They said that regulations of the CEC were within their authority. And that the forms that listed numeric codes by the handwriting experts was conclusive.
2516 Not dated by voter.
378 Information about voter not entered by voter or circulator.
1543 Last name, first name, patronym not entered by voter.
I don’t know if the signatures were not dated, or that the graphologist concluded that they were dated by someone else. This might mean that a different pen was used, etc.
Nadezhdin has lodged another complaint, apparently arguing that the administrative records used by the CEC did not match the internal passports. A hearing on this is set for 21 February, 10:00.
Sorry, I’ve been slammed this past week. I’ll respond further as time allows.
For now: I don’t find -10 to be very cold. Below -40 is uncomfortably cold to me.
I should also mention I’m reading the Carlson interview with Putin. I’m about halfway through it, and will return to it at some point as time allows.
At some point, I’ll also hopefully attempt to watch the videoclip, at least long enough to see whether they allowed the President to speak in Russian with subtitles or have the annoying translation voiceover. If the latter, it’s less likely I’ll continue to watch past that point. It seems from what I’ve read so far that the translator has less than perfect English, so I’d prefer to hear the original, if that’s in fact available.
One positive impression I have of that so far is the length to which the President was allowed to lay out his historical case and other answers. This is not generally something you’ll see in a mass market video interview format, particularly US based. Perhaps it’s possible only because Carlson no longer has to have his interview formats approved, or at least not exceedingly irk, the Murdochs and their advertising partners.
Regardless, it’s refreshing.
But, as mentioned, I am among other things having to deal with devoting more of my time to my business interests than normally, with business managers who usually take much of the load off me out sick and/or threatening to quit, so more detailed responses will still have to wait some additional time.
@MaxZ,
Nadezhdin website has added an item Отчёты or Reports, which links to an report of how his campaign spent its money. Clearly he had a professional campaign with paid circulators, rented headquarters in 63 cities, etc.
The total spending was about 100 million rubles, which according to the exchange rate is $1 million. I was interested in getting an idea of various items in Russia. If someone rented a small apartment in Moscow, 60 square meters, living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. Room for one person, or two persons if they were sharing a bed. What would I expect to pay?
If someone were being hired to act as a circulator, what might the pay be? It would be short time hiring, a few weeks, perhaps part time. In the US, there is controversy between hiring circulators on a piece work basis (per signature collected) vs. hourly. There is a belief that those being paid by the signature will use fraud. Those paying would believe the circulator would be in tea shops chatting up the barista.
There is one sentence that confused me:
Отдел подачи отсортировал листы по регионам, сшил и сложил в коробки.
Which is translated as:
The filing department sorted the sheets by region, stitched them and put them in boxes.
Stitching is usually used in the literal sense, sewing together cloth or ornamental embroidery, or perhaps sutures to tie skin together where it has been cut. Idiomatic use: “a stitch-up” would not make sense, nor the figurative use: “a stitch in time saves nine”.
@MaxZ,
They appear to be using simultaneous translation. Putin was wearing an ear piece. Putin speaks English so Carlson’s questions might not be translated at all. I think you will be disappointed with the video. Putin’s voice is muted, so you might have to be able to read his lips, except when the camera is focused on Carlson.
Carlson is genuinely inquisitive. It is not his intent to debate.
Here is an English version of the Tale of Bygone Years as told by President Putin published on the English language Kremlin website.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
You should be able to find the Russian version and compare.
I don’t know whether, on what basis, or how much petition circulators get paid.
The rental market in Moscow, or indeed any city, is quite complicated; the precise location and condition of an apartment have a great deal to do with the rental price.
For the size of flat you indicated, you might pay monthly in the range of $500 US in a less desirable area near the MKAD beltway, $1500 in an average center city building, or perhaps $5000 or more in a famous luxury building. Considerably more affordable than, say, New York or London, and considerably less than most of our other cities.
Landlords have considerable leeway when you negotiate directly. I have tenants who pay a good deal less than what I could reasonably expect to negotiate if maximizing profit was the only thing I cared about, or if I was financially squeezed myself. My wife keeps me from being too excessively kind hearted, or perhaps some combination thereof with lecherous old fool, in this regard.
You can find more about our rental market through search engines. I might connect to a vpn and supply you some links later, but you can find them on your own. My default connection interfaces with this site’s software in a manner whereby my entire comment fails to post if I include a hyperlink of any sort, even to the degree that if I spell out the o in d0t it is memory holed.
The Russian phrase you inquired about is translated correctly. I think they do literally mean sewn, or at least I don’t know what else they could mean. I’m guessing they unstitched signature booklets to have people sign sheets for their region of registration while physically in a different region, to facilitate multiple people signing simultaneously, etc, then stitched them back together by region of registration.
Actually, one issue with that translation is not the one you brought up. Podachi is more precisely “of giving” or “submission of” (signatures to CEC, in this case). Filing is not an unreasonable translation, but could be misleading. However, sshil has no such ambiguity.
Thinking further afield…
The only other potential translation ambiguity there would be highly colloquial and strongly imply an admission of fraud. Nothing else about their phraseology indicates that they are using language in that manner, and certainly they would not be stupid enough to admit anything like that even if they did, as their opposition would be the first to pick up on even the remotest hint of anything like that.
Perhaps, “bound” in some manner besides hand stitched or machine sewing. I’d have used a different word. But by far the most likely translation is literal.
Sorry, I actually don’t have time for this, but translation and apartment rentals are two of my areas of personal interest.
However, not to the point of following your link of the President reading or speaking in English. I’ve heard him speak English before, and it’s quite good, as is his German, much as you might expect on the basis of his job during Soviet times.
I agree with your characterisation of Carlson’s approach.
$1 million US would be quite inadequate for the signature phase of a US Presidential campaign which had to gather signatures for the general election, if it had to get on the ballot in every state from scratch. I think I’ve read Mr. Winger provide an estimate on the 10 million USD range, yielding something on the order of roughly perhaps 700k accepted signatures.
These US signatures have a sorting which isn’t correlated anything like precisely to the number of states or the number of voters. Each state has its own procedures and deadlines, starting dates, signature formats, signature validation procedures, rules for signature gatherers, and in some but not all cases further sorting requirements by county or town.
Our process is different – more simple and logical in some respects, more Byzantine in others. Nevertheless, with 100k+ valid requirement, a relatively short gathering period, and a rather rigid distribution requirement, $1 million would at best be only enough for what I would call a semi-professional campaign.
That is, one highly reliant on volunteers and in kind donations in addition to whatever it manages to raise, and more apt to pay highly motivated quasivolunteers who are unemployed, have flexible schedules, underemployed or willing to take on an additional job, or who quit their job for the duration of the campaign and can go back to it or find a new one afterwards; i.e. people who are motivated by the cause as much as or more than the financial incentives, but need financial incentives to make devoting adequate time feasible.
Or, one which hires people for various tasks, but has to offer low rates out of necessity and therefore might forego higher quality help.
Or, one which offers market rates, but where the decisions on how to spend available funds are made by people with inadequate experience, etc.
I’ll dig into the reports later, I hope, but as a general matter, such forms of semiprofessionalism, among others, are relatively easy to paper over in reports, especially in a country like ours where intellectual capabilities exceed financial ones all too often.
And, I’ll dig into it not because I care much about the former Nadezhdin campaign, but out of professional curiosity. Unmasking the truth behind such reports happens to be one of the things I do – you might call it industrial espionage and countermeasures. Generally speaking these days I hire people to do it, but as I mentioned, there are some short to medium difficulties, and I’ve already devoted far more time to this than I should currently.
Correct me if I’m wrong.
Russia has 4 parties which can run a Presidential candidate in all regions without petitioning. The US has two.
A few US states have additional qualified parties, some of which don’t run presidential candidates, or may or may not. Only one US third party currently has such automatic presidential ballot access in a majority of states or for a majority of voters.
The number of signatures a US campaign has to gather if it has to do ballot access in every state from scratch is likely to be over a million raw signatures (raw = including invalid). Without offsetting volunteers, this can cost $10 million, if not more.
Russia’s population is roughly half the US, so multiply these by two for comparison: Nadezhdin came very close to qualifying with right around 200k raw signatures at a cost of about 1 million US, plus an unknown amount of volunteer or below market rate (quasidonated) help.
…all of which, of course, means Russia’s process is more dictatorial and less fair than the US.
RIGHT???
Do two wrongs make a right? Or does only might make right? I tend to think the latter, but I’m open to persuasion that the former is also true.
Actually, not much to dig into. The report is quite short.
They spent, at current exchange rate, an average of about $850 US each to rent 63 regional headquarters for an unknown rental period. These were used to train signature gatherers, accept signatures they gathered, process them, and store them for safekeeping.
Looking back at Jim Riley’s question about rent, I think he asked the wrong question, although maybe he had other reasons to ask it. These rentals were office space, not apartments; short term, not long term; and not in Moscow. All these make a big difference in the answer. It sounds to me like they got cheap office space for a month or two, likely on short notice.
Approximately $335k US was spent on signatures. Or more precisely, payments to signature gatherers.
It’s hard to break this down, since it doesn’t say whether any signatures were gathered without pay, and if so, what percentage; whether any signatures were gathered by experienced professionals, and if so what percentage, or whether they were all gathered by people trained in gathering for the first time in these offices; whether there were any crew bosses or subcontractors, or if autograph gatherers who were paid were all directly contracted with the campaign; what signature gathering experience the trainers had, if any; if all payments were per signature, all per hour, some for expenses, etc.
A very similar amount was spent for salaries (at) and expenses of regional headquarters. It’s very difficult to know what this means.
What were the expenses? What tasks did they pay for? How many people? For how long? What percentage of which tasks was done by volunteers? What amount of what expenses was offset by in kind donations?
Full time or part time jobs, or what mix thereof? Clearly these were largely temporary jobs, which also makes a difference.
For comparison, the average salary for all occupations across the Russian Federation is estimated at perhaps around $700 monthly.
The federal headquarters spent roughly 1/3 that amount. Something just came up, will continue when dealt with or perhaps tomorrow.
I’ll get back to the analysis later, but for the time being:
1. A translation of sshil occurs to me which is neither an admission of fraud, nor literally stitched or sewn, nor necessarily anything like bound or clipped. It’s still colloquial, and out of character with the rest of the report.
The best English translation might be something like doctored up. But, that does not have to imply forgery or fraud. They mention, explicitly, that their call center collected missing data from signatures. This could mean that it’s legal for call center staff to append this data to “doctor up” signature sheets before submission, or even “doctor up” photocopies or scans after submission, to prove that the signatures were legitimate.
Still, it’s odd to find, basically, prison/hooligan slang inserted incongruously in the middle of this report. I exaggerate only slightly here. Educated Muscovites from respectable families understand such expressions perfectly well, and even use them outside of formal settings.
2. The Kremlin website link isn’t anything like what I thought it would be from Jim Riley’s description. It’s simply a written article about Russian and Ukrainian history by the President. Nothing about it says whether he translated it himself, had someone else do it, or even wrote it or just signed off on it.
He’s capable of any of those, or, as seen in the Carlson interview, of explaining the same facts contemporaneous. So am I. I don’t know for what possible purpose Jim Riley pointed me to this link.
I think has was just being sarcastic and pulling your leg, since he called it “a tale of bygone years as told by President Putin,” implying it was not accurate history somehow.
That part seems obvious enough. My implied question still stands.
I notice Google decided contemporaneously should be contemporaneous for me, incorrectly correcting my English, and making me sound like someone who is either poorly educated or has less grasp of this foreign language than I actually command. I wonder who programmed their algorithms thusly, and for what reason or reasons.
I’ve not checked above to see how else their program may have butchered my writing. I make enough typographical errors of my own without their help, so why add to them unnecessarily? Their agenda with their incorrect autocorrections, much like Jim Riley’s with his Kremlin website link, remains quite mysterious to me.
Continuing analysis from 4:05 pm yesterday your time. As we’ve seen, around $335k each on payments to signature gatherers and for salaries and expenses at 63 regional hqs. A bit over $50k to rent those 63 hqs. Around $110k for salaries and expenses at federal hq.
As previously mentioned there are a lot of unknowns here before we can even ask if this was the right way to allocate what money they had. My previous questions and suspicions still stand.
Having summarized the previous portion I’ll next move on.
Media: ~$130k
Checking and submitting signatures: ~$67k
Call center: ~$20k, first used to remind people of their commitment to sign the petition as left through the website, then to doctor up signatures that the CEC rejected (answering a prior question)
IT: ~$12k website maintenance and payments for signature checking system (answering another question above)
Typography (apparently, newspaper ads):
~$10k. They raised more like $120k for this. Over 50 were rejected on orders from above. Much of the rest was stolen. Money raised for this purpose was redistributed to other categories. On second read, their own printed material, not newspaper ads.
Candidate travel ~$6k
Candidate security ~$4500
That’s it for their bare bones report. I’m not sure how to assess their spending decisions on such a basis.
@MaxZ,
The question about apartment rent and pay for a circulator were not so much about the cost of those items, but get an understanding of the cost of living. I can interpret the 100,000,000 ₽ as being equivalent to $1,000,000 based on the current exchange rate. But if I had $1000 and converted to 100,000 rubles, there is nothing I could do with it other than eat it, and it might not be particularly nutritious, with the ink and chemicals involved in making the paper likely being toxic.
So I was trying to get a sense of what an ordinary person in Russia would have to pay for a modest apartment. For example, I might understand $1,000,000 as the equivalent to 1000 months of rent in Houston. You could probably get more months at the risk of a less desirable location (less safe or longer commute). You could get fewer months if you wanted a newer complex in a more desirable location.
An average wage of $700/month (70,000 ₽ ?) is about $4. Someone working part time for a short period, and semi-volunteering as a circulator might work for $3/hour. In the US circulators generally prefer to be paid by the signature, since it gives them an incentive to work harder. For larger initiatives, they can go to shopping malls or Walmarts where they might be able to work in parking lots. Approaching random strangers may take a lot of encounters, as shoppers avoid people walking up to them, particularly if it appears to about politics.
Some States restrict piece-rate circulators. They may suggest that this will lead to fraud or misleading circulators. Democrats and Republicans might also oppose this type of circulation because it might be successful.
Incidentally, BAN had an article on February 20 about a candidate in Illinois who had been challenged and kept off the ballot. In Illinois candidate petitions are filed with electoral authorities, but they do not check them. Instead someone has to challenge them. Sometimes it is an opposing candidate, but just as often it is a private citizen who claims that they just want to make sure the election law is followed (they are of course working for another candidate or party). The Election Board has a hearing where the challenger produces evidence, and the candidate can prevent counter evidence.
In this case, the candidate was in the process of getting a divorce, and wanted to change back to her maiden name. She had taken affirmative action such as changing her driver’s license and voter registration. The election law permits candidates to use nicknames and various forms of their name. You might run as “Max xxx” or “M xxx”. Candidates who have recently (last 3 years) must disclose that change and it would appear on the ballot so it might be
“Vladimir Lenin, formerly known as Vladimir Ulyanov until October 1917”
There are exceptions where the candidate has recently been adopted, married, divorced, or even changed gender identity. They may use their new name without disclosing their former name.
Presumably the law is so people can’t change their name to deceive voters.
In the Illinois case, Ashonta Akiwowo resumed use of her maiden name of Ashonta Rice. The challenger presented all kinds of evidence that she presented herself as Ashonta Akiwowo in the previous three years. And further since her divorce was not final she couldn’t use Ashonta Rice. The elections board, ruled that it was OK for to appear as Ashonta Rice on the ballot, but since her divorce was not final, she should have disclosed the name change, and that name change would appear on the ballot. The petitions actually have a statement to the effect, presumably so signers would have that information.
Rice/Akiwowo appealed to a circuit, which upheld her being kept off the ballot. She appealed the case. The appellate court stayed the action of the circuit court (that is don’t remove her from the ballot, while we ponder the case). She was on the ballot, and voting had begun. The appellate court upheld the circuit court decision, and dissolved the stay. The election was paused to permit ballots to be changed.
I don’t know why her candidacy was challenged. Maybe it was just to knock her off the ballot. Maybe it was hoped that some people would react negatively to a name of Ashonta Akiwowo. Or perhaps the challenger James Murphy-Aguilú was concerned that people would react to his name. His mother was from Puerto Rico, and apparently the double barreled name was created when his parents married.
You asked about Moscow. Moscow is not typical of Russia. An MKAD beltway apartment is perhaps three times as expensive to rent, on average, as an average apartment of equal size throughout the Russian Federation.
A center city Moscow apartment is perhaps three times as expensive to rent, on average, as an MKAD beltway apartment of equal size.
A prestigious “name” building can make that same sized apartment yet another 3x or more expensive.
In terms of purchasing power, it’s not easy to come up with an accurate “exchange rate” since the difference in price can vary quite a bit depending on what you intend to purchase – both between the US and Russia, and between locales within either. Given the larger physical size of our country and less smooth transportation networks, among other factors, our internal price differences can be much more dramatic than yours.
@MaxZ,
I think you are misinterpreting the purpose of the call center. The Nadezhdin campaign is making three claims.
(1) The CEC ruled that about 4500 signers did not personally enter the date of signing, and print their name (first name, surname, patronym). Nadezhdin claims that the reasoning of the graphologist was not shown. Instead the conclusion of the graphologist was reduced to a numeric code. I don’t know if that code means that no one entered a date, or that someone other than the signer entered it for them.
It is quite possible that some people when presented the petition sheet would not follow the instructions of the circulator. Ordinarily, the circulator would check that and have the signer enter the date. But maybe they were distracted, and the signer hurried off. Maybe the circulator or someone else would correct the mistake. Maybe the signer held the clipboard at an angle as they entered the date. Maybe different pens were used. Without seeing the actual petition sheets we can not determine what happened (at least in some cases in the US, the petition sheets are part of the evidence and can be viewed online).
It is unlikely that if the campaign knew that they had fixed up the date and names that they would have challenged the CEC.
(2) Apparently the regulations require circulators to be registered. The Nadezhdin campaign is challenging the use of a form that required the region that the circulator would work in. If a circulator worked in a different region, all signatures collected were considered to be invalid.
(3) My understanding of this claim is that the CEC was using outdated records. If the signer’s identity did not match their administrative records they would conclude that signing was invalid. I believe the call center was contacting the signers to confirm that the administrative records were in error, rather than the signing.
All three claims have been rejected. The first two are on appeal, with the hearing on February 26.
If you go to the kremlin.ru website and click on События you can then select a date. Select 12 July 2021 you will find an article by President Putin ”[o]n the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians“. If you select 13 July, you will find a question and answer session about his article. The main (Russian) website has a video of this question and answer session. July 14 has a message from Putin to President Macron of France congratulating him on Bastille Day (14 July).
So it is just news from the (office of) the President. Whether Putin drafted the message to Macron or even viewed it is unknown, but it was sent on his behalf by someone who had authority to do so.
The message about the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians was clearly written by Putin and a subject of great interest. Note than in the Carlson interview, he had already prepared a set of documents “proving” his story which he handed to Carlson. The 12 July 2021 Article has been commented on in the West, generally by more scholarly publications rather than the popular press. This was all before the “Special Military Operation” began in 2022.
If you go to en.kremlin.ru website, it is just the English language version of the main web site. One difference there is no video of the July 13 question and answer session.
Putin could have just referred Carlson to the 12 July 2021 article and saved time.
The Primary Chronicle of Kyivan Rus’ from about 850 to 1110 (A.D.) had been copied and recopied by monks over the centuries. Sometimes they edited it, and apparently added lengthy religious interpretation. It is not known if it was written contemporaneously with the events (such as the reign of Vladimir the Great).
One version which was at one time considered definitive begins with the phrase, “Tale of Bygone Years” and is sometimes used as an informal title.
I merely translated exactly what their report on Nadezhdin’s website said explicitly. I’m not sure where any miscommunication may have occurred. I’m reading it in Russian and the translation was my own. It wasn’t ambiguous. I have not yet had time to read the rest of what you wrote. Again, I could have written that article myself, as could many other people. More as time allows.
Could you translate the fifth paragraph on the Reports page. It begins with “Колл-центр” I am not seeking a translation of that word, but the entire paragraph (WordPress apparently does not like long passages in Russian, or perhaps using Cyrillic characters).
It is not apparent that you have looked at the Nadezhdin claims that are being litigated. In particular look at the middle claim on “Claim to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation” page (link at top of Nadezhdin main page).
@MaxZ,
You aren’t President of Russia. If you look at 13 July 2021 on the Kremlin website, you will see an interview where he explains his reasons (about a 25 minute video).
I have not looked at the claims. For one thing they are not that interesting to me. For another I am busy currently. I’ve explained this several times.
The word you are not seeking translation of is call center. It’s actually the English words in Cyrillic, as they have in recent decades become adopted Russian words, like many things we didn’t used to have.
I’m aware I’m not the President of Russia . I’m not aware why I need to watch a 25 minute history lesson video when I could teach the same class. I’m already quite familiar with this history. I don’t need to read or watch more about it.
I already translated the paragraph about the call center. You told me I got something wrong or didn’t understand. It wasn’t ambiguous. The translation was straightforward. I have other more pressing and interesting things to do than to look at it yet again .
Certainly, Putin could have referred Carlson to an article. However, even if Carlson read it, many of his viewers wouldn’t have. I’m certain you’re aware of how this works.
@MaxZ,
The topic of BAN is ballot access. The article that began this thread was about Nadezhdin being denied ballot access.
Yes I know that those words mean “call center”. You did not translate the role of the call center. You gave your gloss on it. The Google translation conforms to the claims made by Nadezhdin in his court cases. You don’t know what those claims are. Yours do not.
The video is an interview of President Putin explaining why he wrote the long history lesson in July 2021 (the Tale of Bygone Years). There is a Russian transcript and an English translation.
But I referred you to the long history from 2021 because it had a written translation. You had expressed concern about the simultaneous translation of the Carlson interview. There would have been time to modify awkward wording in a written translation.
What does it mean when you put your two forefingers together and slide them back and forth?
Perhaps we ought to continue this conversation when I have fewer demands on my time. I was expecting that to be the case by now, but it’s still not, and I’m not seeing daylight.