On Sunday, December 4, Russians voted in a parliamentary election for 450 seats at stake in the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia. However, there were reports of massive cyber attacks on an electoral-watchdog website that
alleged numerous campaign violations.
Golos, an independent vote monitoring group, said that "its observers' 'Map of Violations' website documenting claims of campaign fraud became the target of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, while its whole communications system was being undermined."
These reports of widespread fraud and observer intimidation need to be promptly and thoroughly investigated by the Central Election Commission of Russia. Please sign this now to encourage the Commission's Chairman do this immediately.
We the undersigned are concerned with the reports coming in about massive cyber attacks on independent election observer groups in Russia. One observer group's website alleged widespread fraud in the election campaign, and its website was reportedly shutdown by a distributed denial of service attack.
This bullying of election watchdog groups is completely unacceptable in a Russian democracy. As the Chairman of the Central Election Commission, you can ensure there is a speedy and thorough investigation into these reports of violations. For the sake of discouraging these practices and promoting free and fair elections in Russia, please do so.
