make simple dismissals of bureaucrats in a manner that >> andrew kramer with "the new york times" on the ground in moscow. thank you for the update. >> thank you. >> our guest here andrew weiss. thank you for making it. i know the traffic here in washington can be tough sometimes. thank you. >> great to be here. >> let's just turn our attention to -- we just heard from the last caller about, you know, we need to deal with russia as it is and let the people of russia sort out who is going to be its leader and where it goes next. what's your reaction? >> i think russia is in the stage of building something brand new. putin created a system over the last ten years. we've seen real problems in the last few months with that system. outgrowing some of the socio economic gains. there's a big part of russian society, 25%, 30%, which feels they want a voice. they don't want to be subjects. they want to be citizens. we're seeing some of those growing pains righte question i with a big percentage of those people feeling very alienated. they feel like their rights as citizens have been trampled.

andrew kramer is joining us on the phone this morning. le mt me begin with your headlie in "the new york times." what happened in the polling place? guest: this is just one polling place. i would not want to extend what i saw into russia as a whole or into chechnya as a whole. some of the statistics speak for themselves. as there were flipping through the ballots, the members were growing nervous and it became apparent there would be more balanced than they had registered voters for the district. this can be explained by absentee voting and something called mobile voting work they carry two ballots to people that are home sick. i was offered three explanations for this. there were fewer votes than we saw counted. it was a confusing scene. host: what are the implications of this? guest: the observers are saying that the vote was not necessarily fair throughout russia and there might a bit less ballot stuffing. there are questions about the fairness of this vote. having witnessed this, i drove that point home for me. there are certain regio

party just months before the election i'm joined by andrew hardisty here in the studio is chair of democrats abroad in russia and atlanta we have amy kramer she is chairman of the tea party express and co-founder of american grassroots coalition and also in atlanta we have laura bramble she is a freelance writer and blogger all right cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want amy if i can go to you first in atlanta mitt romney he see is there seems to be an inevitability about the man but as things stand right now is the electable you know i use the word and have a bit and have that ability but i don't see it that way i mean we are only a third of the delegates have been awarded there this is still an ongoing process and anything can happen we've seen all of these candidates rise up and fall and you know the people have a voice with their vote and so i just don't see that we already have a nominee. and laura if i can go to you i mean i think the number the numbers are out there i mean the numbers seem to the say a lot about you know which states we're going to have as the process continues and it romney has a m