Just an example: in the end of 2012 Crimeans were the least active in elections in the whole Ukraine having less than 50% activity. Year passes, a lot of people boycott the referendum and BAM Crimeans have more than 83% of activity. Magic of Russian election system, like in good ol' times of USSR.
Comparing an election for ukrainian oligarch #1 and ukrainian oligarch #2 who get 50% activity, and a referendum to join good ol' Russia altogether? Use logic sometimes, pretty normal people are more interested to get their mostly-Russian people country out of pro-EU Kiev state, and come to vote massively to enact it.
Oh lol 
Just read the official announcement of Mikhail Malyshev (the head of referendum commission): he said that during elections 1,250,426 voted in Crimea besides Sevastopol and 1,724,563 including it. 1,724,563 - 1,250,426 = 474,137. It's 100,000 more people than there are registered citizens in Sevastopol including kids
Guess what: people from NOT Crimea - Ukraine came to vote here, and not only pro-russian people. Also your maths is based on
3 years old census. Just from the last months of uprising, lots of pro-russia fled in eastern provinces to not get burned by peaceful molotov throwers and -magically- boosted their population.
Crimean self proclaimed government announced 96.77% of votes for joining Russia with 83.1% of population. My mistake was 3.03%, I guess my ironic joke had a great success. Funny thing that votes for staying in Ukraine are somewhere around 2% because more than 1% of bulletins were wasted. That what happens when Russians count bulletins (unluckily 146% didn't show up this time 
).
Your mistake was "early result" poll. What you didnt get yesterday is that even in modern democratic countries you have people counting bulletins and on a hour-to-hour basis and calculating the temporary results + broadcasting on TV.
Option two would not in practice be any different from option one.
It might be hard for a thinking-challenged Russian to understand, but option two would not in practice be any different from option one.
No, it wouldn't have shown that. The options were "join Russia" or "join Russia after the pro-Russian government says we join Russia."
Even if there was a "fuck off" option, how do you know the results wouldn't be manipulated? The current situation in Crime is not exactly the best for neutral and fair elections.
Hey hey now, I though this debate was over at
page 113, the option 2 was -fact-
NOT JOIN RUSSIA. Re-stating your factual opinion on a scenario where people massively vote 2 and the results dont change, is a tad pretentious since the concerned population (Crimean people) forbid themselves to vote. I might be a true brainwased russian too, but at least I'm not pretending I'm Nostradamus and that if people wouldnt have openly boycotted and conceded victory to russian side, things would have been different.
I'm all for being a cynical man and its pretty obvious things
wouldnt have been different (or only slightly so) even if there hadnt been a boycott, but thats a wrong argument to oppose to the apparently rigged results.
Seeing all the butthurt comments on how referendum should have been done, how fast it was, how efficient it was, I think that even if the results wouldnt have been rigged it wouldnt have changed a thing on this forum opinion on the referendum itself and its legitimacy. Like every national elections where the political stability is off, the losing side accuse the other of cheating, thats a bit like corruption accusation on people actually in power (which proved to be true for Yanukovich).
Poll