You really don't see the difference between eliminating all the candidates (and all popular candidates) and eliminating one candidate per district?

Smart Voting™ creates these popular candidates in the districts where all competitors of Putin's guy are more or less equally popular. Knowing whom they will make popular is an advantage for Putin, don't you agree?

I have a feeling you're arguing out of stubbornness. My original point was that announcing the Smart Voting lists in the last moment can be useful, I think gave some good reasons for it.