Russian elections: activists on alert to prevent vote rigging A protest against Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg. Photograph: Dmitry Lovetsky/AP After Alexander Karosenko voted in Russia's parliamentary elections in December, he was left angry by the feeling that he had been cheated. As the country goes to the polls on Sunday in the first round of presidential elections that could see Vladimir Putin returned to the job for up to 12 more years, Karosenko will be checking the results himself, rather than relying on officials. He is among a new generation of activists, one of tens of thousands who have taken to the streets to demand an honest vote, and will be watching for the fraud that they fear will give Putin a first-round victory. "I felt that the previous elections were dishonest," said Karosenko, 37, an economist, who will arrive at a polling station at 7.30am and spend 13 hours there. The results didn't fit with what I saw in Moscow. The election, which could lead to Putin being returned for his third term as president, pits him against four candidates, but none is a real threat. Two have lost to him several times already; another told voters, in a previous campaign, to support Putin; and the last is a billionaire oligarch who has yet to convince supporters he is his own man. "Civil activism is greatly increasing and people want to take part," said Nikolai Lyaskin from the Observers' School, one of a number of organisations that have been teaching the new monitors. The elections in December led to widespread accusations of vote-rigging, with convincing videos of the alleged fraud on YouTube. The protests that followed led the opposition to sign up people to monitor the presidential vote. Up to 30,000 observers are expected to take part. "There are so many, they are starting to compete over who gets what polling station in Moscow," said Lyaskin. Observers fear that numerous fraudulent practices could be used, from the widespread use of absentee ballots to simply rewriting the "protocol," which lists the votes cast, at the end of the day. Another way, revealed by undercover journalists in December, was the so-called "carousel," where groups are bussed around to vote multiple times. Observers will only be able to prevent a certain degree of fraud as there are not enough for all 91,000 polling stations. "It reduces the number of falsifications, but it depends on the desire to fake results," said Andrei Buzin, an expert at Golos, an organisation that monitors election fraud, and co-author of a book on Russian elections called Methods of Falsification. "If there is a huge desire, it won't reduce it," he said. If reports come in that Putin is doing badly during the day, a signal can be sent down to boost his vote, he said. There have already been reports of numerous violations and what the opposition says is a system designed to get the required result. Dmitry Gudkov, an MP, warned on Friday that a new form of election trickery had been invented in the provinces, with ballot boxes containing fake votes hidden in the cars of officials who visit the sick and infirm. Gudkov advised observers to mark ballot boxes with red paint so that they could not be swapped. In St Petersburg, Oksana Dmitrieva, another MP, reported that election officials have been threatened and bribed. The government has reacted to the wave of protests by first denying that there was any meaningful fraud, before introducing some anti-fraud measures.Web cameras have been installed in all polling stations and police have been told to side with observers in any dispute with officials. All these measures are improvements, said Buzin. However, the cameras, which cost nearly £320m, will not watch over election officials when they sign off the count, he said. After being accused of fraud, Putin responded by accusing the opposition of getting ready to fake the fraud. They are preparing to use some mechanisms that would confirm that the elections were falsified. They will stuff ballots themselves, monitor this themselves, and then present this themselves," he said. To teach the new observers, actors and celebrities have produced a series of videos. In one, a naked election official refuses to give a copy of the polling station protocol, saying that the photocopier is broken; that there is no paper and that she has no money. They may not have clothes, money or a conscience, but they must give you a copy of the protocol. Demand it," the observer, who is also naked, says in the video. This new civil activism is what opposition leaders have been striving for. It makes them citizens. It makes them grow up," said Yevgenia Chirikova, an opposition leader. Putin remains popular outside the major cities, and even if the election is free and fair he is expected to win. "Maybe he will win anyway," said Karosenko, "But the question is how he will win."