Member of the City Electoral Commission from Yabloko Pavel Shapchits added a special opinion to the electoral commission protocol

Press Release, 19.03.2024

Photo from the official website of the St. Petersburg Electoral Commission

Pavel Shapchits, a member of the St. Petersburg Electoral Commission from Yabloko with a decisive vote, attached a special opinion to the protocol on the results of voting in the presidential elections in St. Petersburg. The city electoral commission summed up the election results on the evening of 18 March.

Pavel Shapchits emphasised that he could not agree with the commission’s decision to approve the results of the presidential election due to a range of recorded violations and the lack of transparency of the voting, which took place on 15-17 March.

In particular, the 2024 election campaign was marked by minimising independent public participation and monitoring of the voting process. Thus, 409 candidates for members of precinct electoral commissions, submitted by the St. Petersburg branch of Yabloko, were not appointed to the new precinct electoral commissions when they were formed. The Central District of St.Peterburg, where Yabloko traditionally shows good results in elections, was completely deprived of party representatives in precinct electoral commissions, thus, commissions in this district consisted mainly of public sector employees and functioned on the basis of unity of command.

“As part of this campaign, the absence of representatives of the St. Petersburg branch of Yabloko in electoral commissions in entire territories does not allow me to have reliable information about the voting process and to be confident in the correctness of the vote count in these territories,” Pavel Shapchits, a member of the City Electoral Commission, points out in his dissenting opinion.

He also notes that due to the information campaign to discredit independent observation at elections, based on distorted quotes and false speculation, candidates were reluctant in appointing independent observers or even withdrew previous nominations of independent observers, as a result, observation of the voting process, with a few exceptions, turned into imitation.

Pavel Shapchits also notes that the City Electoral Commission’s incorrect interpretation of the norms of federal legislation led to the fact that precinct electoral commissions massively refused to allow members of electoral commissions to take photographs and videos of the voting process, including the process of moving ballots into security bags and sealing them. This absurd ban in a number of polling stations even applied to voters.

Moreover, there were recorded multiple cases of the use of violence when members of commissions and journalists exercised their powers. On 17 March, immediately after 20:00, two journalists who had accreditation from the Central Electoral Commission were violently kicked out of polling station No. 2219.  On the night of 18 March, commission member Olesya Vasilchenko was beaten right in the voting room at polling station No. 427. She was beaten and dragged across the floor until she found herself in the street without any coat in cold. Later the security guard brought her her coat. According to available data, the attackers were representatives of the Territorial Electoral Commission No. 38.

In addition, Pavel Shapchits points out that in 2024 in St. Petersburg the number of polling stations with video surveillance decreased from 1785 to 1452. At the same time, in some territories, due to changes in the boundaries of polling stations, the number of polling stations with voting military personnel significantly increased, and the territories with more opposition-minded voters of TEC No. 30 were less than half covered by video surveillance.

In addition, Pavel Shapchits came to the conclusion that participation in the vote on 15-16 March was involuntary for a significant part of voters.

“They were trying to convince us that the Mobile Voter mechanism was used exclusively for the convenience of citizens. However, it was reported that the management of public sector organisations strongly recommended to their employees to vote at their location and at specific polling stations. Polling stations with record high number of “voters” had huge queues of public sector workers who had to vote on 15 March before 12:00. The media recorded long queues of people standing in the rain. I just can’t explain the long standing in line in the rain during working hours by reasons of convenience,” the dissenting opinion runs.

Moreover, public sector workers’ participation in voting was controlled externally. There were QR  codes with the signature “Check in” posted at polling stations in the Central District, and public sector workers had to confirm the time and place of their voting with the help of those QR codes.

“I can explain the desire of the management of institutions to send the maximum number of public sector workers to vote at their location on 15 March only by trying to make so that the ballots placed in voting boxes on 15 March would spend two nights in the security bags or stationary boxes,” Pavel Shapchits notes.

In addition, there were cases of incorrect packaging of ballots in security bags with subsequent repacking into different bags in the absence of any observers. A number of commissions (e.g., Territorial Electoral Commission No. 12) used stationary boxes instead of security bags everywhere, although this option is provided only for extraordinary cases of extremely high turnout and a small volume of safes with security bags.

Pavel Shapchits records a return to the practices when precinct electoral commissions submit to higher level commissions data differing from those established during the count of the votes and entered into the enlarged form of the protocol of the precinct electoral commission. There were also cases of changing the data right at the polling station. For example, the entire process of counting votes was filmed at Precinct Electoral Commission No. 1459, the correct data was entered into an enlarged form of the protocol, but this did not stop the commission members from drawing up a protocol with significantly changed data.

It should be noted that the St. Petersburg Electoral Commission approved the results of the Russian presidential elections in St.Petersburg on Monday, 18 March. According to the City Electoral Commission, Vladimir Putin came first in the Russian presidential elections in St. Petersburg (81.65% or 2,324,715 votes). The candidate from the New People party, Vladislav Davankov, came second. According to the electoral commission, 198,000 people (6.99%) cast their votes for him. LDPR leader Leonid Slutsky came third with 146,000 votes (5.15%). The fourth result of 99,240 votes (3.49%), belongs to the communist Nikolai Kharitonov. The final turnout in the Russian presidential elections in St. Petersburg was 74.38%, i.e., 2,692,652 voters.