(Reuters) – The Russian president Vladimir Poutinecandidate for another six-year term in an election his opponents view as a travesty of democracy, said Tuesday that previous U.S. elections had been rigged by mail-in voting.
“In the United States, previous elections were falsified thanks to postal voting (…) they bought ballots for 10 dollars, filled them out and threw them in mailboxes without any supervision of observers , and that’s it,” Putin said, without providing proof.
Putin’s opponents say Russia’s March elections are not a real contest because the president wields uncontested power and his main rival, Alexei Navalnyis serving more than 30 years in prison for charges that Navalny says were trumped up.
They say the use of electronic voting gives authorities the ability to manipulate the vote in Putin’s favor without being detected.
(Writing by Maxim Rodionov; editing by Mark Trevelyan and Kevin Liffey)
