Press Release, 6.09.2023

Photo by Alexander Kazakov, Kommersant

The Yabloko party is appealing through the courts over 40 decisions of territorial election commissions on the formation of precinct electoral commissions and 400 decisions refusing to appoint Yabloko representatives as members of precinct electoral commissions. The lawsuit was filed in the Oktyabrsky District Court by Alexander Kobrinsky, a lawyer and a member of the Bureau of the regional branch of Yabloko in St.Petersburg.

“We believe that the commissions, in violation of the law, reduced the number of commissions members somewhere to ten, and somewhere even to eight people. The law stipulates that at least half of the precinct electoral commissions members must be appointed on the proposal of parliamentary parties, and Yabloko in St. Petersburg is represented in the St.Petersburg parliament. We have six such parties represented in the St.Petersburg parliament in total; it turns out that after the reduction in the size of the commissions, there will not be enough places for everyone. The commissions also ordered ranked voting on proposals from parliamentary parties and mostly refused us in appointing our representatives as commission memebrs,” Kobrinsky explained.

The St. Petersburg regional branch of the Yabloko party sent more than 1,000 proposals to the Territorial Electoral Commission this spring on the appointment of Yabloko representatives to the precinct electoral commissions. However, only 658 out of 1,061 people were able to become Yabloko  representatives in the precinct electoral commissions. In the Central District, not a single candidate was allowed to become a member of a precinct electoral commission.

The St. Petersburg Yabloko tried to challenge these decisions in the City Electoral Commission, and then in the Central Electoral Commission, but they refused to consider the complaint.

At the same time, Maxim Meiksin, the Chairman of the City Electoral Commission, admitted that when selecting candidates, the authorised commissions were guided by actually illegal requirements. Thus, an obstacle to appointment as a member of the precinct electoral commission was the presence of certain “anti-state statements” on social media or experience of participation in political protests. Yabloko noted that the current Russian legislation does not even have the very definition of “anti-state,” while at the same time the Russian Constitution guarantees all citizens the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.