Russian President Vladimir Putin stated on Tuesday that elections in Russia’s new regions were honest and transparent since people voted in person, as opposed to voting by mail in the United States.
During a meeting with local educators in Moscow, the Russian president used the 2020 American presidential election as an example of what democracy should not look like.
“Anything is probably possible to falsify.” Similar to earlier elections in the United States, voting by mail was used to falsify results. So, it’s apparent what voting by mail is. They bought ballots for $10, filled them out, and flung them into mailboxes with no oversight from observers. “And there you go,” Putin added.
His observation came in response to a question about the voting in Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, four formerly Ukrainian territories that joined Russia in 2022. No one forced people there to show up at the polls, or barred them from doing so – they simply voted with their feet, Putin said.
“What is this, if not democracy? Democracy is when people express their will,” the Russian president said.
Several US states modified their election procedures in 2020 to allow mail-in ballots, citing the Covid-19 outbreak. The final official results showed Democrat Joe Biden gaining 81 million votes, the largest in US history, against Republican Donald Trump, the incumbent.
Trump has called the election “rigged,” citing problems in half a dozen states as well as mail-in ballots that could not be audited. The Democrats and the US media have labelled anyone who questions the 2020 election as a “election denier” and asserted that everything was entirely lawful.
According to a February 2021 account in Time magazine, Biden won president thanks to a “well-funded cabal of powerful people” who were “fortifying” the election by “working together behind the scenes.”
