Press Release, 27.07.2020

On July 24, the district electoral commission for constituency No 25 decided to deny registration for the elections to the City Duma for Alexei Sadomovsky, Deputy Chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of Yabloko. The electoral commission recognized 16 signatures out of 146 for the nomination of Alexei Sadomovsky as invalid. (Collection of a certain number of signatures in favour of nomination of candidates is a mandatory requirement of the Russian law.  Signatures must be collected in compliance with strict requirements and within a short interval of time. If over 10 per cent of the total number of collected signatures are recognised during verification by the electoral commission as invalid, the candidate is denied registration.) The candidate sent a complaint about the commission’s actions to the City Electoral Commission and began again collecting signatures in support of his nomination.

Alexei Sadomovsky noted that on July 21, the last day scheduled for verification of signatures, the verification of the signature lists submitted by him was completed and not a single error was found in them, about which the final protocol was drawn up.

“I was sure that everything was fine, and even wrote a post about it. On July 24, [the electoral commission] held a meeting on my registration. Right during this meeting, the commission began to check my signatures again, pulled out from somewhere a handwriting examination, which took place after the expiration of the signature verification period. The handwriting expert allegedly worked on July 22, they did not invite me there, although they were obliged to, they did not invite other members of the commission, including the chairman of the working group on signature verification. The handwriting expert was working over my signatures alone with Sergei Krutov, Chairman of the Electoral Commission, election committee, who is also Deputy head of the administration of the Nizhny Novgorod region for housing and communal services,” Sadomovsky stressed.

“We have a video of the process of signing by many of those whose signatures were found invalid. Two of the signatories came to the meeting of the electoral commission, confirming that they signed themselves. Among the “fake” signatures is the signature of Dmitry Kuznetsov, founder of the Elysium group, Albert Kuznetsov, lawyer of the Committee Against Torture, Sonya Pigalova, and Askhat Kayumov, head of the Dront environmental protection centre. We will challenge the unlawful decision in court and in higher commissions, we will prove publicly that this decision is political, unlawful, and all the signatures are, certainly, real, ” the Deputy Chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod Yabloko added.

Alexei Sadomovsky announced that he would be nominated again, he intends to submit 146 signatures required for his registration to the electoral commission on July 29 by 18.00

It should be noted that the elections of deputies of the City Duma of Nizhny Novgorod will be held on September 13. The City Duma of the 7th convocation will consist of 35 deputies. The term of office of the deputies of the City Duma of Nizhny Novgorod is five years. In February 2020, a new scheme of electoral districts was presented, according to which the number of deputies of the City Duma of Nizhny Novgorod will be reduced by 12 people.