Specially for the web-site, 25.05.2020

On 20 May, 2020, the Federation Council [the upper chamber of the Russian parliament] approved three laws relating to the electoral process in the Russian Federation. All the three laws are repressive, toughly restrictive, and significantly impede the exercise of constitutional electoral rights of citizens. They facilitate creation of additional mechanisms for manipulating elections, preventing unwanted candidates to participate in the elections, both before and in the cause of election campaigns, as well as mechanisms to ensure the necessary voting results, that is, election fraud.

1. The circle of people incapacitated in their constitutional rights (deprived of the right to be elected) is considerably braodened. These are persons who committed criminal offences of moderate severity, including violations in organising, conducting and participating in rallies, marches, demonstrations and pickets.

The non-admission of such persons to elections for eight years after they have served their sentence is a measure which is absolutely disproportionate to their danger to society.

Such innovations represent a crackdown on [all the dissenting in] the electoral field before the election!

2. The process of collection of voters’ signatures in support of a candidate (party) [so that to be registered in the election campaign] is greatly complicated and the possibilities of rejecting these signatures [as defective] and, consequently, refusal of registration of candidates undesirable for authorities are simplified – this is cleaning up the electoral field right during the elections!

3. Remote electronic voting has been introduced at elections at all levels, which, given the overwhelming administrative resource, will be a powerful means of election fraud.

4. Early voting and voting outside the premises of polling stations have been introduced, allowing to conduct voting not by law, but according to the rules established by the Central Electoral Commission of the Russian Federation, anywhere, any way and within 15-10 days without restrictions and without any public control.

5. The experiment on introducing digital electoral districts into the election process is extended from the territory of Moscow to the entire territory of the Russian Federation. Now, citizens, being in one region of the Russian Federation, can vote for candidates running for election in another subject of the Russian Federation. The problem why such [digital] electoral districts are created is completely far-fetched. In the conditions of the irremovability of the authorities and the lack of confidence in the elections, it is unlikely that any of the guests of other cities will seek the opportunity to participate in the elections with a predetermined result in an alien city. It is quite possible to use this mechanism in order to adjust the voter turnout or voting results.

Laws of a repressive nature have been again adopted instead of a long-pending reform of the electoral system in order to create a modern, truly democratic mechanism of the change of power. This demonstrates a lack of intent on the part of the authorities for democratic change.

Appendix:

Expert opinion of the Centre for Legislative Initiatives of the Yabloko Party on draft laws adopted by the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation No. 894460-7, 896235-7, 912249-7 on amendments to the electoral law