Press Release, 24.09.2020

On 22 September, activists of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of Yabloko filed several lawsuits demanding to cancel the results of early voting at dozens of city precinct electoral commissions. Also, in a number of cases, democratic candidates demand that the results of voting at polling stations on the election day 13 September be canceled. In particular, 16 lawsuits were filed by Denis Anatolyev, Yabloko’s candidate in constituency No. 19.

The election headquarters of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of Yabloko states that the results of early voting in the elections to the Nizhny Novgorod City Duma were falsified and there is a lot of evidence of this.

Thus, an abnormally high voter turnout was recorded in all constituencies after early voting, which cannot but give rise to thoughts of election fraud. In addition, the results of early voting and the voting on 13 September differed drastically at the same precincts. In the first case, the overwhelming majority of votes fell on the pro-government candidate, in the second on the opposition, respectively.

“Most of all we are indignant by early voting, as the turnout in most districts was abnormal, while electoral commissions denied access to observers to the voters lists in order to verify the number of signatures and the number of early voting ballots. For example, at the precinct electoral commission No 2305, when they quickly scrolled through the list for us, we saw only 58 marks, but there were already 278 ballots, so it is not surprising that voters who came on election day found out that they “had already voted” early. Many deputies received their mandate only due to the early voting, we are not satisfied with such an early vote,” Oleg Rodin, Chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of Yabloko, stressed.

In addition, activists of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of Yabloko also add that in several polling stations observers recorded a gross violation of the law, when a voter who came to vote, found out that someone had already voted for him/her by forging his/her signature. During early voting, the actual number of ballots often differed from the number on the voter list, and at many precinct electoral commissions, observers were completely refused to view the voters lists. There is evidence in the Internet how real voter lists were replaced with fakes, as well as evidence of change of early voting envelopes by faked ones. All this makes the fact of election fraud absolutely obvious.

It should be noted that the elections of deputies of the Nizhny Novgorod City Duma took place on 13 September. There were six candidates from Yabloko. Electoral commissions refused to register in the elections a number of candidates from the party, including the Chairman of the regional branch of the party Oleg Rodin, and Deputy Chairman Alexei Sadomovsky. The Nizhny Novgorod branch of Yabloko refused to recognise the election results.