Press Release, 1.10.2021

Photo by Alexander Koryakov / Kommersant

The regional branch of the Yabloko party in St. Petersburg has filed about 150 administrative lawsuits in courts challenging the results of voting at polling stations where the most flagrant violations of electoral legislation were recorded during the elections of deputies to the city’s Legislative Assembly and the State Duma.

The grounds for cancellation of the voting results are as follows: fraud with home voting, non-admission of electoral commission members and observers to the polling station, “carousels” [when same persons vote several times at different precincts], unlawful removal of observers from polling stations, opening of precincts’ premises at night, hiding of voter lists, fake security bags for ballots, turning off the electricity at night in order to stop video surveillance, loss of ballots, placement of safes outside the surveillance zones of cameras, rewriting of voting protocols, unlawful opening of security bags, and stuffing of ballots.

In addition, Yabloko is seeking cancellation through the courts of the decision of the territorial electoral commission, which canceled the voting results at precinct No. 2208, where Yabloko’s Boris Vishnevsky was twice ahead of Alexander Rzhanenkov. At the same time, the territorial electoral commission did not cancel the elections in the neighbouring polling stations, despite the gross violations recorded.

The hotline of the public movement “Observers of St. Petersburg” received 1,470 reports of violations during elections in St.Petersburg on 17 – 19 September. The Commissioner for Human Rights in St. Petersburg received 568 complaints of violations of electoral rights during the three-day voting. The Ombudsman’s office is preparing a special report on the fact of these appeals.