For many, elections are about choosing between a bad choice and a worse one.
For the residents of Barnaul in Siberia the mayoral candidates weren't cutting it, so they found an alternative.
Barsik, an 18-month-old Scottish Fold cat, has been submitted as a candidate for the mayoral election and had already attracted international attention.
The cat, which is running against six human candidates, received 5000 votes in an unofficial poll on a regional social media page, Altai Online, on the Russian social site VK.
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The administrator of the forum, Altaysky Seyatel, told CNN the votes, which accounted for more than 90 per cent of the poll, were due to "the other candidates not being well known to the citizens of the city".
"People don't understand the other candidates' programs, their motives for the nomination, or what they want to do for the city," he said.
Another poll on the page identified corruption among local authorities as the biggest problem in Barnaul, something that has apparently troubled residents about other human candidates.
The Guardian quoted pensioner Yevgeny Kuznetsov saying: “People don’t know who to trust any more”.
“They have come to the conclusion that they can’t trust the authorities.”
The previous mayor resigned in August.
