Putin Wins Third Term As Expected

The irony is--yes, Virginia irony is dead, but it keeps coming back like a zombie--he did not need to cheat. Russian pundits think he would have won with just over 50% of the vote. Not good enough for Putin and his machine to avoid a run-off, so they manufactured a 64% thumping of rival candidates. Not quite as bad as a communist "election" but close enough for the Kremlin. The methods used are familiar to western politicians: ballot stuffing, voting more than once at different polls, and removing outside observers from the polls. Nevertheless there has been some green shoots of democracy in Russia with rival political rallies and demonstrations unscripted and unplanned. And only 250-1000 arrested out of thousands in the inevitable anti-Putin demonstrations after the election's predictable outcome. Medvedev will serve as President until May, then take over as Prime Minister in the job swap with Putin. In a conciliatory move, he ordered 32 criminal cases to be reviewed including the imprisonment of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.