The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin discusses how Putin rose to power and instituted a dictatorship, using some of the same voter suppression tactics we are currently seeing in the U.S.
A book review, published in the latest issue of Ballot Access News, explains that a 2004 Russian ballot access law required parties to have a meeting of at least 500 people to nominate a presidential candidate. Those 500 people first had to go before a notary to verify who they were.
That sounds a lot like the Kansas law mandating that voters must prove their citizenship before they can vote.
Russian law also required parties to obtain 2 million signatures in a short time. Signatures were also declared invalid if the signer signed St. Petersburg instead of Saint Petersburg or wrote apt. instead of apartment. Pennsylvania’s third parties are familiar with those kinds of tactics as well.
The book’s author, Masha Gessen, lived in Russia when the book was published, but she has since moved to New York to escape possible prosecution.
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