Moldovan Election Observation - in Moscow

Since I was not able to go to Moldova and observe the elections there, on Sunday I accompanied my wife to the Moldovan embassy in Moscow - following instructions on the embassy website - site of the sole polling station in Russia for the supposed 700,000 Moldovans who live and work in this country. I am a bit skeptical of this figure, mainly because it was used in a Channel 1 news report (not the one linked to above, but the one I saw later in the evening) to suggest that the Moldovan government was trying to suppress the vote of Moldovans living in Russia, with the assumption being that they would take a pro-Russian stance and therefore vote against Voronin. This was of course born out by an "exit poll" - scientifically conducted, no doubt, although I saw no pollsters at the voting station asking questions of people exiting - broadcast on Vremia, the results of which supposedly showed that 60% of the two to four thousand voters at the Moscow polling station voted for "opposition groups" and only 2% for Voronin's party.

Russia had reason to be sore with the Moldovans conducting the election - after all, Russian observers were not allowed into the country for the March 6 vote - but this kind of biased reporting is the main reason why I find Vremia to be such a painful show to watch.

Anyway, we showed up at the Moldovan embassy in downtown Moscow and wound up waiting about 90 minutes as Lorina stood in line to vote and eventually cast her ballot. Here's a brief photo essay - I wish I'd been able to get it posted here sooner, but hopefully it will still be of interest to some.


The wait begins - 5:15pm, at the end of the line.


The line stretching around the corner of Kuznetsky Most
and Rozhdestvenka St.



The line from the Kuznetsky Most side.


5:30pm - Lorina looking cheerful in line -
before she got sick of everyone around her
arguing, cursing and shoving.



Entrance to the polling station on Rozhdestvenka St.


Russian policemen controlling the queue on the Rozhdestvenka St. side.


6:30pm.

The senior officer on the scene was calling a higher authority to ask whether his team would have to stay past 9pm. That was the time when the polling station was scheduled to close down, but it appeared that would not give all of the assembled prospective voters a chance to vote. The cop on the phone appeared more concerned with letting the two busloads of militia who were there for crowd control go off shift on time - remember, this was the Sunday before two days off in Russia - while his shorter, stouter colleague kept the Moldovan masses orderly. I don't know whether they kept the polls open late after all in Moscow - it was too cold to stick around and watch.


6:31pm - the wait continues.


6:42pm - our work is done here.

When Lorina came out of the polling station, she was a bit tired from all of the shoving and cursing in line, and a bit ashamed of the disorderly way in which some of her compatriots had behaved, but she had in her passport the equivalent of the "I voted" sticker given out at American elections, a small stamp saying "Votat," meaning (naturally), "Voted":


I guess the stamp differs pretty significantly from the sticker they hand out in the US, though - one is a good way of keeping people from voting twice (although one report quoted a Russian observer who found the practice suspicious), and the other just lets a proud citizen demonstrate that (s)he has fulfilled a social obligation.

Thus concludes our brief foray into the world of election observation. For those interested in more on the Moldovan elections - they appear to belong to history now - SiberianLight has several good posts (organized by index topic - nice touch), or you can check out a recent cover story on opposition candidate Iurie Rosca in the always lewd, often interesting eXile, or, for those of you not afraid of Russian, RIA Novosti's coverage of the story.

The New York Times, to its credit, had one of their Moscow correspondents in Moldova for a week covering the story - read his stories here, here, here, and here, before they become pay-per-view.

Finally, the RFE/RL website has an interesting article called "Moldova: Voters Back Communists -- But Which Communists?"