Ismail
12th April 2013, 01:13
From "The Functions of Elections in the USSR," Soviet Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Jul., 1978):
"Second, a person may claim that he expects to be absent from his voting district on election day and obtain a certificate enabling him to vote elsewhere from the district electoral commission office. Although it is impossible to obtain precise figures it seems that in urban areas perhaps a quarter of electors have obtained such certificates... although the vast majority of persons in our sample had on occasion received [a certificate], only one had ever used the certificate for its intended purpose. And when election day comes the recipient of an absentee certificate normally does not vote. Of course, members of the district electoral commissions know perfectly well why most people request such certificates: as most of our respondents indicated, many electors do not wish to waste time taking part in a senseless activity on election day, particularly if the election is being held in the summer when the weather is fine..."
"One respondent, formerly a member of a district electoral commission, related the following incident. Just after the prices of staple goods were raised in the early 1960s relatively large numbers of electors were expected to (and did in fact) vote against nominated candidates. This expectation prompted the authorities to circulate a directive to district electoral commissions introducing a regulation which specifies that one can vote against a nominated candidate only by drawing a 'solid straight line' through the candidate's name on the ballot: all ballots which were marked with lines that were not perfectly solid and straight were counted as being for the nominated candidate."
On the other hand, in local elections canvassers trying to get everyone to vote would occasionally come up against people who demanded that mundane problems (roofs leaking, for instance) be fixed before they did so. Since various municipal services are at the reach of party committees during election-time, it was possible to direct them to fix said problems in order to secure a vote.
"Second, a person may claim that he expects to be absent from his voting district on election day and obtain a certificate enabling him to vote elsewhere from the district electoral commission office. Although it is impossible to obtain precise figures it seems that in urban areas perhaps a quarter of electors have obtained such certificates... although the vast majority of persons in our sample had on occasion received [a certificate], only one had ever used the certificate for its intended purpose. And when election day comes the recipient of an absentee certificate normally does not vote. Of course, members of the district electoral commissions know perfectly well why most people request such certificates: as most of our respondents indicated, many electors do not wish to waste time taking part in a senseless activity on election day, particularly if the election is being held in the summer when the weather is fine..."
"One respondent, formerly a member of a district electoral commission, related the following incident. Just after the prices of staple goods were raised in the early 1960s relatively large numbers of electors were expected to (and did in fact) vote against nominated candidates. This expectation prompted the authorities to circulate a directive to district electoral commissions introducing a regulation which specifies that one can vote against a nominated candidate only by drawing a 'solid straight line' through the candidate's name on the ballot: all ballots which were marked with lines that were not perfectly solid and straight were counted as being for the nominated candidate."
On the other hand, in local elections canvassers trying to get everyone to vote would occasionally come up against people who demanded that mundane problems (roofs leaking, for instance) be fixed before they did so. Since various municipal services are at the reach of party committees during election-time, it was possible to direct them to fix said problems in order to secure a vote.