Russian Authorities Are Trying Really Hard to Boost Turnout in the Upcoming Election, Good Taste Be Damned

This year's electoral campaign is set to be the strangest in Russia’s recent history, all about convincing those Russians who aren't fans of President Vladimir Putin or who just aren't motivated voters to show up at the polls and cast their ballot, no matter the candidate, because doing so would lend legitimacy to what's considered a foregone conclusion: Putin's reelection.

Russian authorities’ concern over turnout has reached almost feverish obsession with anonymous, homophobic propaganda videos and men’s magazines using sexualized imagery to complete their “civic responsibility” to websites like Russian airline Aeroflot urging their visitors to vote.

Putin is expected to win by such a colossal margin (as he’s already done three times since 2000) in the March 18 election that he not only barely, if at all, campaigns, but can’t even be bothered to be filmed for his own campaign video, which had to be stitched together from archival footage. Or even appear in public in the last month before the election date, if only to quench the rumors of a terminal disease or a palace coup.