On Friday, October 3, 2003, the Russian Democratic Party YABLOKO submitted to the Central Electoral Commission its electoral signatures to support YABLOKO's candidates from the federal party list for the State Duma election. YABLOKO submitted a total of 226,353 signatures collected in 71 regions of Russia. YABLOKO turned out to be the first party in the present election campaign to undergo this procedure.

"The collection of signatures was not easy, as at present people's attitudes to politics are ambiguous", Deputy Chairman of the party Sergei Ivanenko told journalists. "However, we managed to use the collection of signatures to explain our position to the electorate." Sergei Ivanenko also said that YABLOKO primarily used party activists to collect the signatures YABLOKO. "Owing to our activists - and we have about 70,000 party members at present - we collected the signatures at the minimum expenditure," noted Ivanenko.

As well as collecting signatures YABLOKO submitted to the Central Electoral Commission the financial report on YABLOKO's work since the beginning of the election campaign.

In general the parties that will participate in the parliamentary election have to submit to the Central Electoral Commission at least 200,000 (but not more than 250,000) signatures in favour of their candidates. Then the Central Electoral Commission will check the authenticity of the signatures and correctness of the data provided in the lists.

According to present norms the Central Electoral Commission examines 40% of the required 200,000 signatures. If this selection does not meet the requirements, all the signatures have to be checked.

After verifying the signatures the Central Electoral Commission registers the party as a fully-fledged member of the election campaign, and those indicated on the official party list become official candidates for the post of State Duma deputy.

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