| The Central Elections Commission has acknowledged that
changes get made to vote tallies after observers leave polling stations,
Novaya Gazeta reported Thursday.
The newspaper used the commission's response to Communist Party allegations
that votes were falsified during December's parliamentary elections to
suggest what techniques could be used to manipulate the results of Sunday's
presidential election.
Three months ago, the Communists submitted a complaint accusing the
Central Elections Commission of certifying falsified results, saying their
vote tally from the notarized protocols gathered by party observers at
polling stations did not square with the declared results. Similar complaints
were raised by Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, but all the complaints
were dismissed.
Protocols show the vote counts registered at any given voting station,
and observers and election staffers are supposed to be given identical
signed and stamped copies.
The commission, however, told the Communists that they had the wrong
protocols -- an impossibility if observers and election staffers got identical
signed and stamped copies, Novaya Gazeta said.
The newspaper interpreted this as proof that elections officials at
certain stations signed and stamped a falsified set of results after the
observers had gone home.
Meanwhile, the liberal Yabloko party on Wednesday filed lawsuits demanding
that the parliamentary election results be voided in 170 of the 225 single-mandate
districts.
It said it filed the 78 lawsuits after comparing14,065 protocols that
its observers received to the ones received by local election committees
and finding that the numbers did not match.
See also:
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State Duma elections 2003
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