Leave him alone, he prefer not to see the facts but to live in his own dreamworld.

Anyone who believes this silliness about an 80% turnout and a 95+% vote in favor of Russia is the one living in a dream world.

Sorry, man, but last 13 years biggest part of population of Crimea was dreaming of coming back to Russia. The same can be said about east and south regions of Ukraine. 
You see these things watching TV and internet - we see this things from speaking with real people - our relatives and friends who left in Ukraine after USSR busted.

It's not hard to believe that a majority of Crimean Russians would want to rejoin Russia, of course. But they are less than 60% of the population, and I'm not buying that there is such a strong pro-Russian sentiment among Ukranians and Tatars that we wind up with these almost North Korean style results.

Little hint for you. Its much more tatars and ukraines in Russia then in Crimea. And they live much better than tatars and ukraines in Ukraine... )) So its not hard to say that a big part of Crimean tatars and ukraines would like to join its real motherland. 

Little hint for you: 97% (and climbing!) is absolutely fucking comical. But I guess this just goes to show that the vote was rigged this way for Russian consumption and not for the benefit of an international audience. Rah rah, Putin!

...just look photos/videos from yesterdays Crimean referendum... Happyness on the people's faces is impossible to fake. Even for the Putin Almighty.

LOL! Sure, those people are happy. That must mean there is no opposition!

Terrific reasoning there. Truly.

badgenome is usually a reasonable guy, so giving him a chance to explain his position is ok. But apparently he is in a bad mood today :D I didn't see a single argument -- just rant -- so yes, probably better to ignore. And it's truly lol at "60% Russians in Crimea", didn't I say that already to someone else that Russian-Ukrainian self-identification is very tricky thing?

But don't you just like how ceratin people over here arguing with you on the topic of Crimea and Ukraine as if you know nothing? :D Give them a chance and they will start teaching you how to speak Russian. Especially I like Ukrainian expats in Canada who never been in Ukraine, those are the most avid Ukrainian patriots (it's not like they gonna live in this mess after all).

Here's offical info btw:

Yes: 96,77%, No: 2,51%, Total voted: 83,1%. In other words out of all people of Crimea who has right to vote 80,42% voted yes and 2,09% voted no to joinging Russia, the rest ignored referendum.

And a bit of "likbez" on Crimean Tatar situaion. The topic has been raised a couple of times during briefing before the referndum and afaik there were pro-Ukrainian rallies up to few dozens of people in Crimea here and there, mostly Tatars.

Tatars is about 12% of total Crimean population, political preferences is not as straightforward as some might think among them. There's so called Majlis of Crimean Tatars, that used to play a major role in the political life of Tatars in Ukraine, prime figures to know are Dzhemilev and Chubarov. Majlis is supposed to be an official representative of Crimean Tatars in the world, but I'm not sure about its actual legal status, de-facto actual support of it would be somewhere around 10-18% of all Crimeme Tatars, so they hardly could speak for all Tatars in Crimea.

Its natural to expect that majority of Majlis supporters would be situational allies with current Kiev authorities. Majlis people are the main recruit base for Hizb ut-Tahrir, an islamist organization (regarded as terroristic in Russia).

On another side there's about the same percentage of Crimean Tatars who are avidly pro-Russian -- business interests, relatives, military or navy service in Russia -- there's guy usually nicknamed himself as Ayup-han (pic below), talk to him if you want, he's Crimean Tatar. Everyone inbetween, ~60% of Crimean Tatars, are politicall indifferent, but given Tatars are traditionally run small businesses that either provides services or sell goods for recreational purposes (Crimea is popular resort), it's absolutely ok to expect big part of those to vote yes.

So there you have it. Bottomline. Considering all Tatars automatically pro-Ukrainian is a big mistake, to word it the right way -- they are least expected to vote yes, neverthelss I'm pretty sure a lot of them did exactly that.

//And if you think that Crimean Ukrainians en masse would vote any different than Crimean Russians -- just drop the topic altogether, you do not have any idea what's going on :D To word it in the shortest way possible -- your mistake here is you perceive this as strictly ethnical issue.

UPD: Guess the Tatar on the pic ;)