Three days of voting in Russia's presidential election began Friday, and the only unknown about the outcome is how big Vladimir Putin's victory will be. The Russian leader's main political opponents are banned from running, jailed, exiled, or dead, and the only other candidates on the ballot are "low-profile politicians from token opposition parties that toe the Kremlin's line," the AP reports. "Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today," European Council President Charles Michel said in a post on X. "No opposition. No freedom. No choice."
- Turnout. The outcome isn't in doubt, but authorities have been pushing hard to achieve high turnout and have introduced electronic voting for the first time, the BBC reports. Turnout was 68% in 2018, when Putin was elected to his current six-year term, though there were allegations of ballot-stuffing. In 2012, turnout was 107% in a precinct Putin won 1,482 to 1. According to leaked documents, regional governors have been ordered to secure 75% turnout and 80% support for Putin, NPR reports.
- No international oversight. The elections are taking place without the presence of international observer missions. Russia's main election monitoring group, Golos, has been declared a "foreign agent" and its co-founder is in jail. "The elections in Russia as a whole are a sham. The Kremlin controls who's on the ballot. The Kremlin controls how they can campaign. To say nothing of being able to control every aspect of the voting and the vote-counting process," says Sam Greene, director for Democratic Resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington.