NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...

iving United Russia a bigger victory.
“Nonsense!” Nah-Nah’s fans insisted. “Nothing depe
nds on the vote. Our only option is protest.”
The Navalny faction thought there was hope for the
collaborating parties. “If they could get enough
seats in Parliament, you would see how quickly the
y would move away from Putin.”
The Nah-Nah enthusiasts disagreed. “The moment the
y get to Parliament, they will obey Putin like wel
l-trained puppies.”
Though no one could convince anyone else, more and
more people entered the conversation, more and mo
re people abandoned the apathy that is the very fo
undation of the Putin government.
A few days before the election, I heard a rumor th
at United Russia would be satisfied with only a si
mple majority, as opposed to the two-thirds majori
ty it has now — the party’s main concern is that t
he presidential election in March appear legitimat
e, so that Mr. Putin can replace Dmitri Medvedev,
his underling and the current president, and stay
in power until 2024. But in the end, when the gove
rnment said that United Russia received half of th
e vote, most Russians knew the results were manipu
lated, and suspected the party got even less.
That is because voters, fueled by the debate betwe
en Nah-Nah and Navalny, came to the polls armed wi
th cameras. There was footage of abuses and many a
ccounts of corruption: witnesses said that the hea
d of the Election Commission had thrown packaged b
allots into a voting bin and that pro-Putin youth
voted multiple times with fraudulent IDs; impossib
ly different results from incredibly similar polli
ng stations have been posted online. And the gover
nment-controlled television stations said nothing.