City Hall on Tuesday reset an online poll on whether to replace historical buildings with modern replicas, going back to square one after bloggers complained that the poll was rigged in favor of tearing down old Moscow.
"Falsification is out of the question," City Hall spokeswoman Gulnara Penkova said late Monday.
"Another thing is important," she said, Interfax reported. "There are people who benefit from these kinds of rumors. From late Thursday they started attacks [on City Hall's web site] in order to boost one option."
Penkova was referring to the bloggers who rushed to vote from Wednesday to Friday to keep the city's architectural legacy. Votes for the other option to replace old buildings — a cheaper and more lucrative policy favored by City Hall — skyrocketed over the weekend, triggering the fraud accusations.
The poll allowed visitors to vote multiple times by reloading the page, but the option appeared to be disabled Tuesday.
By 6:30 p.m., 943 votes were given for preservation and 213 for reconstruction.
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