In a result that shocked absolutely no one, Vladimir Putin won a resounding 76,7% of the vote in the Russian election that took place over the weekend.

Given that he has a habit of killing people who don’t play ball with his wishes (or they end up dying in mysterious circumstances via a kind of poison produced solely in Russia), you have to be pretty brave to vote against him.

If you choose to vote for Putin, though, it turns out you might actually get to vote twice. Photographers captured 17 people voting at two or more voting stations in the town of Ust-Djeguta, in southern Russia, with this from the Guardian:

Official results released on Monday showed the three polling stations in Ust-Djeguta had an average turnout of 81.5% and delivered a majority for Putin of 89.86%. National turnout was 67%, according to the central election commission.

At polling station number 216, a count revealed there were not enough ballot papers to tally with the figure for Putin votes – 1,299 – that officials had provisionally pencilled in. When a recount produced the same outcome, the election officials said they were going home.

When Reuters reporters asked how the officials could go home at that point, the director of the school hosting the polling station said: “You want to cast doubt on Putin’s victory?”

Here are five examples of people voting at two different polling stations in the area:

Hang on, Russia didn’t hold a free and fair election?

Yeah, can’t even feign surprise:

Reuters reporters also used mechanical counters to count everybody who cast a ballot at 12 polling stations. In some places, the discrepancies between the official count and the Reuters tally were small, but in nine of the 12 polling stations the discrepancies were 10% or greater.

In the 2016 Russian parliamentary elections, Reuters carried out a similar exercise. On that occasion, among turnout discrepancies, a Reuters reporter who had cast a ballot for a party other than Putin’s United Russia found that no vote for that party had been recorded at that polling station.

The circus rolls on.

[sources:guardian&businsider]