The Los Angeles Times has an interesting story this morning, “Russian elections called a sham.” Most of the story focuses on questions of how Putin had personalized the election campaign, and whether that was undemocratic.

But buried deeper in the story were some interesting numbers:

In the restive northern Caucasus, voter turnout reached nearly 100%, and about 90% of the votes went to Putin’s party, according to official results. In Chechnya, election officials announced a 99.5% turnout and said more than 99% of those voters cast their ballots for Putin’s party.

Asked by a reporter whether he believed those numbers were correct, Peskov grasped for an answer.

“Well, it’s a very interesting result. I don’t think I have a right either to believe or not believe,” he said.

“At least, I don’t have a right to speak about that. But I know for sure these are official results and I don’t have a reason to distrust them.”

(Peskov is referenced in the story as “Kremlin spokesman”).

Those are some interesting results, similar to the data that our colleagues Misha Mygakov and Peter Ordeshook have written about, including their chapter for our forthcoming book on election fraud (to be published by Brookings Institution Press this coming year). I’ll see if Misha and Peter have looked at these election results yet …