Press Release, 22.11.2019

The Vasileostrovsky District Court of St.Petersburg partially upheld the lawsuit filed by Ivan Starikov, Yabloko’s candidate to municipal deputies of Municipal District No. 7 of St.Petersburg. The court returned Starikov the mandate stolen by fraud.

The candidate from Yabloko demanded to declare unlawful and cancel the protocol on the voting results of precinct electoral commission No. 114, which was drawn up after a manual recount of the votes that were first counted by a voting machine. Recounting was carried out without notifying candidates in the early morning of 9 September (the next morning after the voting day of 8 September).

After the votes were recounted manually, Andrei Gorchakov, candidate for deputy from the ruling United Russia party, obtained 72 additional votes as compared to the result from the voting machine. These votes were enough to get him a mandate. Initially, according to the results from the voting machine and prior to the recount of votes, Yabloko candidate Ivan Starikov had to receive the mandate.

The court refused to completely cancel the protocol on the results of the vote, citing the interests of the population, however, the court amended lines 18-31 of the protocol basing on the second copy of the protocol, which allowed Ivan Starikov to get his mandate. According to the electoral commission, the first copy of the protocol “was lost”.

Maxim Katz, head of the Yabloko election headquarters in the municipal elections in St. Petersburg, emphasised that a total of 23 more mandates stolen from Yabloko were being disputed in St. Petersburg courts.

It should be noted that according to the results of the St. Petersburg municipal campaign, 94 candidates were elected as municipal deputies from Yabloko.

The party received a majority in two districts – Liteiny and Vladimirsky, as well as the largest factions in the Smolninskoye and Malaya Okhta municipalities. In addition, the Yabloko team received 13 seats out of 20 in the Murino municipal district (50,000 residents), which is located on the border of the Leningrad Region and St. Petersburg.

The St. Petersburg municipal elections were accompanied by numerous violations and scandals: unlawful prohibition and removal of candidates from the elections, lawsuits, open fraud – 24 mandates were stolen from deputies after the voting day with the help of the technology of “recounting” of votes.

Yabloko lawyers filed lawsuits in courts to challenge the outcome of municipal elections at the polling stations where they were rigged.