Press Release, 8.11.2023

Photo: Alexander Shishlov / Photo by the St.Petersburg Yabloko Press Service

Each member with a casting vote of the St.Petersburg Electoral Commission should be able to work on a permanent basis as a staff member. The Yabloko faction in the St.Petersburg Legislative Assembly submitted such a bill in the city Legislative Assembly at a plenary session on Wednesday, 8 November.

According to the current version of the law on the St.Petersburg Electoral Commission, the commission consists of 14 members, but only eight of them work on a permanent basis. These include a Chairperson, a Deputy Chairperson, a secretary and five other members; but not all the representatives of all six parliamentary parties of the city that are entitled to have a representative in the commission work on a permanent basis. Only three representatives, delegated by United Russia, Fair Russia, and LDPR, work on a permanent basis. Representatives of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and Noviye Lyudi (New People) did not express a desire to work on a permanent basis. However, the representative of Yabloko, who expressed such a desire, was not appointed as a result of the vote (as, by the way, in the previous two compositions of the commission), despite having a background in law and extensive experience of work in elections.

Thus, members of the St.Petersburg Electoral Commission are initially put in a deliberately unequal position regarding the real possibility of participating in the work of organising and conducting elections.

“In practice, only members of the commission working on a permanent basis are involved in the organisation and conducting of elections. The remaining members of the commission often learn about prepared important decisions only on the eve of the commission meetings and have no real opportunity to influence their preparation. They don’t even have a workplace in the premises of the City Electoral Commission,” Alexander Shishlov noted.

In contrast, in the Central Electoral Commission, each member with a casting vote has the right to obtain the status of a member on a permanent basis. It is guaranteed by federal law.

“Equality of rights for all participants in the organisation of the electoral process is one of the necessary conditions for restoring public confidence in elections,” Shishlov emphasised.

The initiative of the Yabloko faction was not adopted in the first reading. The bill was supported by 16 deputies, one voted “against”, the rest did not take part in the voting.