Press Release, 24.09.2021

Photo: Central Electoral Commission meeting. Photo by Dmitry Lebedev / Kommersant

The Yabloko party demanded from the Central Electoral Commission to invalidate the results of elections of deputies of the State Duma in the federal electoral district. Violations committed during voting and counting of the election results do not allow to reliably determine the voters’ will,  Yabloko’s complaint runs.

The 11-page document sets out the party’s claims to all stages of the election campaign. An appendix listing specific substantial violations takes another 16 pages.

The obligation to mark Yabloko’s campaign materials with information about the affiliation of one of the candidates with a “foreign agent”, numerous cases of Yabloko candidates being withdrawn from the elections, and restrictions on campaigning significantly influenced the mood of society and distorted the expression of the will of citizens, the complaint indicates.

wThus, six candidates for the State Duma from Yabloko were removed from the elections on the grounds of “involvement in extremist activities”, and four more candidates faced unsuccessful attempts of the regional security, defence and law enforcement agencies, as well as electoral commissions to exclude them from the Yabloko candidates list basing on the same grounds.

The stigma of a “foreign agent”, to which Yabloko was supposed to devote 15% of the space of all its campaign materials, represented, in the party’s opinion, “anti-campaigning” and aimed at creating a negative attitude of voters towards the party.

Other complaints include the selective use of “COVID restrictions” when coordinating campaigning events in the regions, dirty methods (for example, Boris Vishnevsky’s two candidates-“twins” in St. Petersburg, who officially changed their real names to Boris Vishnevsky and also grew beards to look alike), and an obstacle to the distribution of campaign materials by the Central Electoral Commission.

The largest block of complaints is devoted to violations during the three-day voting and after the closure of polling stations. The document provides examples of why the remote electronic voting system is not transparent and allows for interference in the electoral process.

The complaint also stated that the possibilities of video surveillance at the polling stations were seriously limited by the Central Electoral Commission, which deprived the regional branches of political parties and all single-mandate candidates of the function of rewinding videos of the broadcasts.

The numerous violations and shortcomings in the organisation of the election campaign on the part of the electoral commissions set out in the complaint have led to the fact that the elections of the State Duma deputies cannot be recognised as free and democratic, do not allow establishing the actual will of the voters and are subject to cancellation, the complaint runs.

UPDATE. The Central Electoral Commission has dismissed Yabloko’s complaint.