MOSCOW, September 20. /TASS/. Volunteers from Russia’s Civic Chamber have uncovered about 14,000 false reports about the State Duma elections, 4,000 of which were made on Sunday, during the three-day voting span. However, it did not affect the voter turnout, Civic Chamber’s Coordinating Council Alexander Malkevich.
"On the last day of voting, September 19, about 4,000 false and misleading reports over the State Duma elections were registered. In total, their amout came to 14,000 over the three-day span of voting. So, the first day of the elections became the most popular for hoaxes as volunteers uncovered 7,000 fake messages," he said. The official recalled that from January to the first day of voting, roughly 5,000 fake reports about the elections were pinpointed, so their total number came to over 19,000 for the entire year.
"These bogus messages did not affect the voter turnout," and most of these hoaxes failed to achieve their objectives thanks to the work of public activists, including volunteers of the Safe Internet League, headed by the League’s director and member of the Russian Public Chamber Yekaterina Mizulina.
"The dynamics of ballot stuffing and fake messages varied from day to day. It depended, obviously, on how society counteracts them. Actively detected and exposed hoaxes weakened their effectiveness and the number of attempts to misinform," added Malkevich.
The official stressed that perpetrators resorted to direct incitement. As an example, he noted a case in Tatarstan where a conflict situation came to blows, and the chairman of the precinct election commission was eventually taken away in an ambulance.
Over networks and comical hoaxes
Malkevich said that the largest number of fake reports was distributed over Telegram and TikTok. According to him, there were a vast number of hoaxes about alleged ballot stuffing in St. Petersburg. "Fake messages were widely circulated that St. Petersburg voters who received four, and even five ballots in some areas, allegedly engaged in ballot stuffing. In actual fact, each person simply dropped his vote into the ballot box. That was the most common hoax about ballot stuffing. The most popular piece of misinformation throughout the entire country was about the optical scan voting system. During the first two days of voting, ‘home-made ballots’ were uploaded to these scanning systems, and it was served up as attempts to engage in ballot stuffing," the agency’s interlocutor said.
In his opinion, the most comical hoax was disseminated in roughly 6-8 regions, about the bailiffs on duty for the alleged purpose of "collecting debts from people right at the polling station. Of course, this is all outright nonsense, which, unfortunately, has been circulating on a massive scale these days," the official concluded.