Press Release, 12.09.2019

The electoral commission of the municipality of Smolninskoye approved the election results. The victory in the municipality, on the territory of which the building of the government of St. Petersburg is located, was won by candidates from Yabloko. The party got seven mandates there, activists of the movement “The Central District for a Comfortable Living Environment” obtained six mandates and the activists from the headquarters of politician Alexei Navalny got three mandates. The election results were announced only on 12 September; almost four days after the voting. Before that candidates were trying to make the electoral commission enter the data on voting into the GAS Vybory system for more than a day.

The electoral commission examined complaints about the cancellation of voting results. In particular, self-nominated candidates and candidates for municipal deputies from the LDPR and the United Russia party said that voters failed to vote, because the names of the parties were indicated in the wrong font, and they were also unhappy with the influence of Smart Vote technique [proposed by politician Alexei Navalny and envisaging that democratic voters vote for the strongest candidate who is not from the United Russia party] on the election results. The electoral commission rejected all the complaints.

The following candidates were elected deputies from Yabloko: Yekaterina Kuznetsova, Chair of the St.Petersburg branch of Yabloko, Dmitry Baltrukov, Ivan Chebotar, Radislav Poluikov, Dmitry Palyuga, Anna Kiseleva and Nikita Yuferyov.

It should be noted that Yabloko nominated more than 400 candidates for municipal deputies of St. Petersburg. So far, it is reported that about 100 candidates have been able to become deputies. However, the data have not been entered into the GAS Vybory system [the federal data base on voting in all elections] in a significant part of the municipal districts where the Yabloko won for almost two days. In many municipalities, the election results have not yet been announced.