Press Release, 1.10.2020

The Board of Appeals of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation upheld the lower court’s decision not to consider Yabloko’s claim challenging the decision of the Central Electoral Commission on three-day early voting.

“The Supreme Court confirmed the reluctance of the judiciary to delve into the violations of the Central Electoral Commission of the federal law “On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights,” says Yabloko lawyer Grigory Makarov.

The resolution of the Central Electoral Commission violates three rights of the plaintiffs at once: the right to elect and be elected on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot (Article 3 Clause 1, and Article 7); the right to observe the elections (Article 28 Clause 2 and Article 30 Clause 4); and the right to participate in election campaign on equal terms.

The Central Electoral Commission exceeded its powers and, in fact, appropriated the powers of the State Duma, introducing new legal regimes – “early voting in the premises” and “early voting at home” – which are not envisaged by the law “On Basic Guarantees”. The new regimes not only fail to guarantee the secrecy of voting, and do not rule out the possibility of substitution of ballots, but, on the contrary, create additional space for manipulation, the Yabloko lawyer emphasises.

According to Articles 65 and 66 of the Law “On Basic Guarantees”, the Central Electoral Commission was obliged to determine the procedure for early voting, including that outside the premises of polling stations.

Now in the resolution contains no criteria for classifying certain territories as places where there are no premises for voting and transport connection is hampered. The contested document does not contain any criteria as to which such places can be considered suitable for holding a vote, for example, in the adjoining territories. In addition, the resolution does not determine which body decides on the assignment of specific territories to a particular category.

That is, electoral commissions, decide at their discretion where to conduct early voting, and election participants do not know where the voting will take place, and therefore cannot control it.

According to Grigory Makarov, the contested version of the resolution creates legal uncertainty, which leads to legal arbitrariness on the part of electoral commissions and results in reasonable doubts about the legality of such a three-day early voting, as well as the legality of the results of the elections held on stumps or in the car trunks.

In addition, the resolution of the Central Electoral Commission does not contain clear rules establishing the maximum number of portable ballot boxes, which creates additional opportunities for fraud and replacement of both ballots and entire boxes with ballots.

The resolution of the Central Electoral Commission also does not envisage the use of opaque envelopes for early voting ballots. It also lacks other sufficient provisions for the storage of ballots (for example, at night) and ruling out of distortion of the voters’ will.