Press Release, 9.09.2019

Electoral commissions of the municipalities of St. Petersburg, where Yabloko candidates won, refuse to draw up the election results. This situation is observed in the vast majority of electoral commissions of the Central District (Liteiny, Smolninsky and Vladimirsky), where Yabloko has received up to 80% of the mandates.

Photo: elected deputies from Yabloko in the Smolninskoye municipal district hold the first meeting and are on duty in the administration building of the Central District of St. Petersburg so that the victory is not stolen by the electoral commission.

In addition, in the municipal districts of Moscow Zastava, Pargolovo, Ozero Dolgoe, Kolomna, Admiralteyskoye and others, where candidates from Yabloko passed, electoral commissions are rewriting final protocols. Fraudulent ballots were stuffed when counting the protocols in the Semenovskoye municipal district, and electoral commission refuses to give final protocols to Yabloko observers in the Novoizmaylovsky district.

Figures differing from those announced were pit down when counting votes in Komendatsky Aerodorm, Admiralteysky and in other districts

According to Boris Vishnevsky, head of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, large-scale fraud is being prepared in the Central District.

“Electoral commissions refuse to introduce the final results into the GAS Vibory (Elections) System [the electronic system were all the elections results all over Russia are contained], offering our candidates and commission members to come by 16.00. It is clear that the data may be quite different by that time. District electoral commission members left the documents and all disappeared nobody knows where. It is obvious that they will try to substitute bulletins and imitate “re-count” of the results,” Boris Vishnevsky stressed.

According to Maxim Katz, head of the party’s election headquarters in the municipal elections in St. Petersburg, attempts to rig the elections are associated with the high result of Yabloko candidates in many St. Petersburg municipalities.

“Around one o’clock in the morning it became clear that we were winning many mandates in St. Petersburg. Despite the high, according to official figures, voting for [acting Governor] Beglov [in the gubernatorial election], in the centre of the city, where they counted normally and quickly, Yabloko candidates passed to the municipal deputies [in the municipal election held together with the gubernatorial election]. The rest of the electoral commissions began a special operation, which is still going on,” Maxim Katz said.

Also a disturbing situation is observed in the Murino municipal district (the Leningrad region), which is located on the border with St. Petersburg, where Yabloko candidates won by a wide margin, taking 13 out of 15 mandates, but the Territorial Electoral Commission was tasked to prevent their victory and they simply refused to announce the final results of the elections.

It should be noted that the Yabloko party nominated or supported 480 candidates in 153 constituencies in the municipal elections in St. Petersburg. According to the data as of 11 a.m. on 9 September, the election results have not yet been announced in most of the constituencies.