Sometimes, I really wonder whether I’m losing my marbles or if the whole world has gone crazy.

Case in point is yet another allegation of the mysterious ghost buses (Romanian version aici) that allegedly were used to defraud the February 24 parliamentary elections in Moldova:

Electoral observers could hardly witness the enormous scale of the highly technical and well-disguised fraud, but, for instance, the electoral corruption associated with the 37,000 voters bused in from Transnistria is hard to deny in light of dozens of media accounts.

To begin with, each media account quotes yet another media account, leading to an endless puzzle box with no end. And as far as I can tell, RFE/RL (an American propaganda outlet) is who originated this story of “ghost buses” full of fraudulent voters from Transnistria.

Did these ghost buses ever exist? And who organized them, if so?

Doing the Math

To be clear, there are between 100 thousand and 200 thousand people with Moldovan citizenship living in PMR (“Transnistria”). As such, they have the right to vote in Moldovan parliamentary elections.

But Moldovan elections are not held on PMR soil, so anyone who wanted to vote had to cross over the border into RM and vote. While you can walk across the border in some locations, the way that people usually cross between the two countries is by bus.

In fact, every single day, tens of thousands of people cross the RM-PMR border by bus. God knows I’ve been one of them, and it’s a commonplace occurrence. Therefore, the fact that people used buses to go to RM to vote isn’t weird or unusual or “scandalous” in any way.

The allegation, however, is that someone organized these buses, paid for the drivers, paid for the gasoline, and then paid $20 (or 400 MDL) to each voter.

Who is that “someone”? And why would they do it?

Here are the final results. As you can see, 33,029 people voted. Just over 50% voted for the Socialist Party, 15.5% for PSM, 10% for the Communist Party, and 4% for ACUM.

Therefore, the ridiculous premise is that someone paid $660,000 ($20 x 33,029) in order to buy just half the votes (if the Socialists were responsible) or less if it was someone else.

That’s quite a poor “return on investment” (ROI) to shell out 600K for a paltry 17,020 votes! And that’s assuming that it was the Socialists who were responsible.

If Plahotniuc, the Communists, or Shor paid for the buses, the ROI was even worse.

History Is Written by Those Paid to Do So

The paid stooges over at Promo-Lex were crowing last week on Twitter because their final report on the February 24 elections was published.

And you better believe that they made the argument about the “ghost buses” front and center.

They somehow counted 82 full-size buses (coaches), 137 minivans (shuttles), and 46 private cars that were used to transport voters from PMR.

Yet despite all this “detailed observation,” not one single person has ever said who organized this flotilla of vehicles and/or was paying for votes. Or even why they would be doing such a thing.

Nonetheless, the story of the ghost buses full of fraudulent voters from Transnistria “ruining” the Moldovan elections seems destined to linger on forever…