Voters will choose a president next week using a flawed and undemocratic system, says the man known as "The Magician" by opposition leaders over his stewardship of Russian elections they say were marred by fraud.

"The U.S. presidential election is not direct, not universal and not equal, and it does not safeguard the secrecy of voting," Vladimir Churov, an ally of President Vladimir Putin who heads Russia's Central Election Commission, wrote in the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

"The electoral system and electoral laws in the United States are far from perfect. They are contradictory, archaic and do not correspond to the democratic principles the United States has declared as the basis of its foreign and domestic politics."

Churov has dismissed allegations of widespread fraud in a parliamentary election won by Putin's party last December and says the president's victory in a presidential election last March reflected the popular will.

The conduct of elections in Russia, which emerged from decades of communist rule in 1991, has regularly been criticized by foreign observers, including from Europe and the United States.

But Churov, turning the tables on Russia's critics, said faults in the U.S. electoral system included the methods of registering and identifying voters, insufficient election monitoring and questionable mechanisms of casting ballots.

Russian officials remain sensitive to U.S. criticism of Moscow's domestic policies and are not slow to respond in kind when the opportunity arises, despite attempts by U.S. President Barack Obama - in a tight re-election race against Republican challenger Mitt Romney - to reset ties four years ago.

The former Cold War foes still disagree on a number of issues ranging from the conflict in Syria to missile defense.

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Editor's Note: Mr. Churov is excused for his flawed understanding of the American form of government because he is a Communist stooge. It would be natural for him to mistake our Constitutional Republic for a Democracy because so many Progressives for so many years have tried to rewrite reality to say that the United States is a Democracy...it is not. A Democracy is nothing more than mob rule. This is why oppressive groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Putin himself in Russia are able to wrench power from the grips of freedom. The United States is a Constitutional Republic that governs via a representative form of government...Do you see the danger of allowing people to misrepresent our nation's form of government???