Over 100,000 gather to protest rigged elections.

Moscow, Saharov Avenue, December 24th 2011. The wide city street, wide enough to fit about 20 car lanes, is completely filled with people. So completely filled, in fact, that my blog cannot contain them within bounds! These people are protesting the falsified elections that favored the United Russia party, and the impending indefinite reign of dictator Vladimir Putin.

December 24th Protest in Moscow (Via Yuga)

There seems to be a debate about how many people actually showed up to the protest. The figures in different reports vary between 29,000 and 120,000. I did some approximate head counting and math myself, and I'm estimating that there are about 108,000 people in this picture. Meanwhile, Belorussian TV is reporting that the protest was a total failure, and only hundreds of people showed up instead of thousands.

Newsflash: Putin's party steals votes.

Of course we already knew that, but this time there's paperwork to back it up.

Official ballot count, as indicated in the paperwork:

1. Communist Party of Russian Federation - 285
2. United Russia - 271
3. Just Russia - 218
4. Apple - 167
5. Liberal Democratic Party of Russia - 133
6. Right Cause - 16
7. Patriots of Russia - 15

Numbers reported by the Central Voter Commission:

1. United Russia - 662
2. Communist Party of Russian Federation - 295
3. Liberal Democratic Party of Russia - 133
4. Just Russia - 118
5. Apple - 67
6. Right Cause - 16
7. Patriots of Russia

Vladimir Putin's party, United Russia, clearly stole 391 votes. That's a lot more than they had.

If that's not enough, here's a screen capture from a news program reporting voter turnout, with the total making up 147% of the population!