Press Release, 26.08.2020

On August 26, the Leninsky District Court of the city of Ivanovo refused to register Andrey Avtoneyev, Chairman of the Ivanovo  branch of the Yabloko party, as a candidate for deputies of the Ivanovo City Duma in single-mandate constituency No. 4. Judge Uenkova did not see violations in the actions of the territorial electoral commission of the Leninsky District, which did not register Avtoneyev in the race, and left the claim without satisfaction.

It should  is noted that the judge ignored the opinion of the representative of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Leninsky district of the regional center, who spoke in support of the plaintiff, as well as the testimonies of witnesses who confirmed that the signatures put in favour of Avtoneyev’s registration [which is a mandatory requirement of the law] were put by them. For the judge even the presence of voters who in person confirmed that they had put the signatures in question did not become an argument to satisfy the claim.

As Andrei Avtoneyev noted, the decision of the court had nothing to do with law and will be immediately appealed to a court of a higher instance.

Also the trial was accompanied by scandals. Earlier, Judge Afonin, who was originally supposed to examine the case, mixed up the phone numbers and called Andrei Avtoneyev instead of the defendants. Thinking that he was talking to the members of the electoral commission who refused registration to Avtoneyev, Judge Afonin began telling what evidence the defendants needed to present in order to remove a candidate from the election. The telephone conversation was published in the mass media, which forced Afonin to recuse himself during the first hearing of the claim. Subsequently, the representatives of the defendant – the electoral commission – petitioned for the inclusion of the Russian alphabet in the case file, which also caused bewilderment for everyone who was following the case.

It should be noted that on July 29, the territorial electoral commission of the Leninsky district of the city of Ivanovo refused to register Yabloko’s Andrei Avtoneyev as a candidate for deputy in single-mandate constituency No. 4. The official reason was that the allowed number of defective signatures put in favour of Avtoneyev had been exceeded. The grounds for the refusal were 14 allegedly invalid signatures in support of his nomination, rejected by the territorial electoral commission after they compared the names with those listed in the GAS Vybory system [the data base of the Central Electoral Commission for all the elections]. Andrei Avtoneyev lacked only five signatures to be registered.

This happened on the last day of nomination of candidates, envisaged by law. Andrei Avtoneyev appealed the decision of the electoral commission in court.

On August 5, the electoral commission of the city of Ivanovo made a decision to refuse to register the list of the Yabloko party in the elections to the Ivanovo City Duma.

Elections to the Ivanovo City Duma will be held on September 13, 2020. Elections to the city parliament are held according to a mixed system: 15 deputies are elected from a single constituency and 15 from single-mandate constituencies. The list of Ivanovo Yabloko included eight candidates, and five were nominated in single-mandate constituencies. The regional branch of the party collected 1,682 signatures of Ivanovo residents in support of the party’s registration.