VOA标准英语2012--Poll Watchers Hope to Cut Fraud in Russia Vote

Poll Watchers Hope to Cut Fraud in Russia Vote

Row upon row of Russians take lecture notes in a university classroom on a Saturday afternoon. They are not poor students.
They are just 50 faces from an army of 200,000 Russians volunteering to work as poll watchers, trying to fight fraud when Russians vote Sunday for president.
One volunteer, Anna Bugrova, says reports from friends and family about fraud in the December parliamentary elections made her angry.
Burgova says she read about fraud on the Internet and realized it was widespread. As a result, she volunteered as a poll watcher.
Her instructor¹ is Matvey Petukhov, of the Citizen Observer monitoring group. He teaches volunteers how to spot ballot² stuffing and multiple voting, but he also trains them in dealing³ with the police and filing legal complaints with prosecutors⁴.
Petukhov predicts the expected surge in watchers at voting stations will prompt fraudsters to concentrate on absentee ballots⁵ and home voting. He estimates volunteer observers will monitor voting at all polling stations in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Russia's other big cities.
At Carnegie Moscow Center, analyst⁶ Masha Lipman cautions the poll watching movement may not extend beyond big cities.
"The effort to observe the election will hardly be nationwide," said Lipman. "In Moscow it will make a difference. However the regions are different and provinces are very different from big urban centers."
To lighten up the four-hour training classes, an ad agency produced an observer training video for free.
After the cries of fraud in the December elections, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced a $500,000r program to install two web cameras at each of Russia's nearly 100,000 polling stations.
But this move did not convince information technology expert Vyacheslav Filippov, who decided⁷ to become a poll watcher. Filippov says a lot of vote stealing can take place off camera and that the public will not have guaranteed access to the videos.
A 23-year-old psychologist, Ekaterina Korovkina, says she is prepared to stay at her polling place for 20 hours on Sunday, watching for fraud. Korovkina says that she has the support of friends, family and her students and that she is prepared to stand and fight if she detects fraud.
Korovkina may have to fight. After Russia's December parliamentary vote, voting experts studied the results for The Wall Street Journal. They concluded that fraud clouded 21 percent of the total, or 14 million votes.

1 instructor   

n.指导者，教员，教练

参考例句：

• The college jumped him from instructor to full professor.大学突然把他从讲师提升为正教授。
• The skiing instructor was a tall,sunburnt man.滑雪教练是一个高高个子晒得黑黑的男子。

2 ballot   

n.（不记名）投票，投票总数，投票权；vi.投票

参考例句：

• The members have demanded a ballot.会员们要求投票表决。
• The union said they will ballot members on whether to strike.工会称他们将要求会员投票表决是否罢工。

3 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

4 prosecutors   

检举人( prosecutor的名词复数 )； 告发人； 起诉人； 公诉人

参考例句：

• In some places,public prosecutors are elected rather than appointed. 在有些地方，检察官是经选举而非任命产生的。 来自口语例句
• You've been summoned to the Prosecutors' Office, 2 days later. 你在两天以后被宣到了检察官的办公室。

5 ballots   

n.投票表决( ballot的名词复数 )；选举；选票；投票总数v.（使）投票表决( ballot的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• They're counting the ballots. 他们正在计算选票。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The news of rigged ballots has rubbed off much of the shine of their election victory. 他们操纵选票的消息使他们在选举中获得的胜利大为减色。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 analyst   

n.分析家，化验员；心理分析学家

参考例句：

• What can you contribute to the position of a market analyst?你有什么技能可有助于市场分析员的职务？
• The analyst is required to interpolate values between standards.分析人员需要在这些标准中插入一些值。

7 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。