The number of voters in Russia has declined by 736,000 since the March 4 presidential election, the Kommersant daily reported on Thursday.
The figure is the difference between the number of registered voters before March 4, as reported by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC), and now.
CEC chief Vladimir Churov described the 700,000 figure as “a seasonal fluctuation.”
“It’s a seasonal fluctuation… This [700,000] is less than 1 percent [of the total electorate],” Churov said.
Experts say the “dead souls” show how many fictitious ballots were cast in the election.
Andrei Buzin, the head of the Interregional Voters Association, said the 736,000 “voters” either never existed or were duplicated in different voter lists.
Electoral law expert Leonid Kirichenko said there are even entire apartment blocks with “nonexistent tenants” in Russia.
Journalist and blogger Sergei Parkhomenko previously stated that there were “phantom precincts” in St. Petersburg, which only existed on paper. The CEC report shows that 90 percent of the “dead souls” in those precincts voted for Vladimir Putin, Parkhomenko said.
