Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Persistent voting

There's just no way to get some people to vote and no way to keep some people from voting.

For One Russian Lawmaker, Bequeathing 31 ‘Aye’ Votes

Vyacheslav K. Osipov, a governing party lawmaker, was absent on Wednesday but still cast 31 votes in the lower house of Parliament, all of them ayes.

You might say he was in an agreeable mood, except that he was dead.

While it was not known exactly when Mr. Osipov died, his colleagues in the Russian Parliament held a moment of silence in his memory at 5:39 p.m., a little more than an hour after he was recorded as voting in favor of banning American adoptions of Russian children. Mr. Osipov, 75, a United Russia party deputy from Mordovia in central European Russia, had been ailing for some time…

[W]hile proxy voting by absent Duma members is relatively common, it was not immediately clear that the rules permitted voting by the deceased. In any event, United Russia members said they stopped voting on Mr. Osipov’s behalf as soon as they were informed of his death…

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Labels: legislature, Russia