It doesn't matter who is casting the votes, said Josef Stalin, an undoubted expert--what matters is who's counting them.

* It doesn't matter who is casting the votes, said Josef Stalin, an undoubted expert--what matters is who's counting them. Standing for re-election as president of Russia, Vladimir Putin has gone one better: It didn't matter who voted or who counted. In a style he can have learned only in good old KGB days, he took care that nobody of any standing ran against him, he closed down the independent media to ensure an almost total monopoly of debate and publicity, and he arrested or chased out of the country the millionaire oligarchs who alone might have had the means or independence to oppose him. He rigged this election as fraudulently as the ayatollahs in Iran had rigged theirs a few weeks before, but far more skillfully. Some Russians refused to vote in this Potemkin election, but plenty more forlornly hope that Putin will represent continuity and security, and anyway they want a strong leader, a czar in a black leather jacket. Such manipulation of a foregone conclusion is as flawless as it is ominous.