Member of the Bureau of the YABLOKO party Boris Vishnevsky will become deputy of the municipal district Morskoi in St.Petersburg. Such was the ruling of Vasileostrovsky District Court in St.Petersburg on May 19. The court cancelled the results of the voting at electoral station No 127 and obliged the electoral commission to recalculate the results of the voting.
According to the municipal elections in St.Petersburg held on March 1, Boris Vishnevsky was elected deputy from Morskoi District. However, the following day the results of the voting changed in such a way that Vishnevsky found himself on the sixth place which meant that he lost the election. As it turned out later, the data of the voting protocols at electoral station No 127 were changed for some reason, while the observers obtained protocols with the initial data. Such a situation repeated with another YABLOKO’s candidate and coordinator of the For the Protection of Vassiliyevsky Island Movement Tatyana Sharagina, while the places of Vishnevsky and Sharagina were taken by the candidates from the United Russia party.
YABLOKO applied to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Investigative Committee and then to court. Vishnevsky and Sharagina claimed that the results of the voting at these electoral stations should be cancelled. The trial also detected that all the bulletins of the municipal election in this district got drowned in water due to an accident in the district administration building, therefore any recalculation was impossible.
Then the case developed even further: former deputy of the Morskoi district Galina Baranova also applied to court (she had lost the election with a considerable gap from the winners). She claimed that the results of the voting in the whole district should be cancelled and new voting should take place. At first she explained that there were multiple violations during voting at the electoral station No 127, but then she suddenly stated that there were violations at other electoral stations too: that allegedly at one station someone was not allowed to vote at home, and at another the number of bulletins in the box exceeded the number of registered voters. But she did not produce any evidence, in addition it turned out that she had not filed any complaints on the voting day. “I guess that Baranova has filed a law suit because of the fear of the local administration that I may win the case, and they have decided to cancel the results in the whole district,” Vishnevsky says.
Public Prosecutor’s Office supported Vishnevsky’s claim about canceling the results of the voting at one electoral station only (this does not require a new election). Public Prosecutor’s Office also proposed that the court should reject Baranova’s claim on conducting a new election. The court agreed with Public Prosecutor’s proposals.
The same type of case - Tatyana Sharagina case - will be examined soon.
See also: Local Self-Governing
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