Naked Candidates Make Russian Politics Even More Interesting

No sooner had we trained our politically scientific eye to the French political scene, then we stumbled on this even sexier development from the country formerly known as the Soviet Union. It seems that current Russian overlord Vladimir Putin discovered a better way to distract voters from his policies than dating a sexy French pop star—he recruited several of the country's former Olympic athletes to ruin for parliamentary elections under his party banner. The only requirements were that they be sexy and female, but that was apparently enough to get them all elected. We're sure it had nothing to do with the relative un-freeness of the Russian voting system and everything to with their, uh ... qualifications, which you can see below. Maybe if our Libertarian or Green parties had thought of this tactic we wouldn't be in the state we're in now. More »