"I hope the process will deliver TIC more problems than me"

The physicist of Andrei Seryakov, who was observing the September elections, require 1.5 million rubles: members of the territorial election commission believe that his post on VKontakte about violations caused them moral damage. Through the court, they demand to remove the publication and write a refutation.

In the post of Seryakov, it was about a closed home -based voting and stuffing 400 ballots with an explicit of 81 people. Andrei attributed violations to the chairman of the site Maria Smirnova and secretary Nina Nekrasova. There was no reaction to the complaint, according to the observer, it was followed. There is also a court for these violations.

"Paper" talked with Andrei about the court and its prospects.

About the lawsuit

- The collective lawsuit was filed by Nikolai Mironyuk, Sergey Gusev and Dmitry Golov at the end of September. It just passed a lot of time from the moment I was found and handed over the materials to the court.

I believe they filed a lawsuit to put pressure on the election violations. If members of the commission win the process, this will become a sign for the rest of the observers: "Do not try to write about us, otherwise we will dry you." Most likely, still members of the election commissions want to erase any mention of their names in connection with falsification (in an interview, Andrei emphasized: that there was falsification - his personal conclusion according to the aggregate of the facts known to him - approx. "Papers" ).

After the publication of the article, none of the members of the election commissions or their representatives was associated with me. Some of them only closed their pages on social networks.

Now I understand that I had no way to prevent falsification. Observers then did everything they could, within the framework of their authority.

It must be understood that we write complaints about violations of precinct election commissions in TIC - these are the same people who filed a lawsuit against me. I can’t attract them to the criminal case, I have no direct evidence. Violations were carried out in such a way that we could not prove anything. The only way to fight against violations in this election is public publicity. I even felt gloating when I found out that they gave me a second chance to illuminate violations, to make the names of the violators remain on the Internet forever. Everything was for this.

Due to preparation for the trial, I have not been working for a week for a week, but from tomorrow I will try to return to the work schedule and finally do science. I would say that I had no serious problems yet. On the contrary, I felt a lot of positive emotions from all sides - it supports me. I hope that the trial will deliver the PEC more problems than me.

Let's see how the university will react, but this will be known after a judicial conclusion. So far, no one has reacted to my activity and work as an observer in St. Petersburg State University. At least nothing came to me, except for the separate support of some employees.

About the prospects of the case

- It seems to me that this case does not have a judicial perspective for members of the election commission. The claims are not at all glued to the law. For example, an article on falsifications is my evaluative judgments as an observer in the elections.

The whole page in the statement of claim is devoted to the fact that I work in Cern, whose legal address is in the "unfriendly" Switzerland. I even had to take a certificate at St. Petersburg State University to show that I am working in St. Petersburg.

The use of photographs of members of the election commission is also not a violation, since they are public persons. The law on the protection of images also says that the image can be published in public interests. Public interests consist in the implementation of society’s need to detect and disclose threats of a democratic and legal state. It is great for my case.

So far, the lawyer and I are very positive. In addition, the court will take place not in St. Petersburg, but in the Ivanovo region - at the place of my registration. I decided that the chances of winning the case there will be above.

About the case of falsification on the PEC

- At the trial on December 7, I could only act as a witness: my elections were not violated. The plaintiff of this case is a candidate from Fair Russia Svetlana Bocharova. She filed a lawsuit to cancel two “abnormal” polling stations (PEC No. 114 and 116 - approx. “Paper” ). The representative of the defendant was there, a member of TIC No. 33.

During the interrogation, representatives of the defendant tried to catch me on two things: abuse of authority and ignorance of the procedure. For example, the lawyer of the commission members tried to catch me with questions of the type “Do you know what the voter book is?” And "How could you understand from three meters that it was a book of voters?"

The lawyer asked with pressure - I think I wanted to introduce me into confusion, as if I was not sure of my answers. Especially the pressure has become noticeable on the question “What do you think are you in the right to photograph the marks in ballots? Are you sure of this? ” By law, I did not violate the secret of the will of voters and knew about it well. The court did not react and did not comment on this. There are no results in the case yet.

About the experience of observing the election

- I am watching the elections from the Navalny campaign in 2013. And there was never that the elections on my site were passed without violations.

But until this year, in my sites, violations always occurred out of ignorance, because they always did this either from the desire to leave home as soon as possible. Sometimes this is due to the fact that the commission does not know the procedure well-then they almost always eliminate problems if the observer reports. And this year I was lucky: I had a really “interesting” site.

With thoughtful falsifications, it is more complicated: they are covered by violations of the legal voting procedure so as to hide the fraud of the votes from observers. Elections on section No. 116 on Vasilievsky Island were held with a large number of violations. We saw them and tried to prevent them - some really succeeded. We were not allowed to influence more serious violations, but we were able to fix them. It seems to me that this is important because we give violations in the publication elections, including with the help of the media.

Now the purpose of observation for me is to increase the cost of falsifications. Make sure that people who participate in them lose more votes for the fraud than they purchased. I am sure that we can still punish them: the Internet remembers everything and time on our side. Despite the fact that now they cannot be brought to criminal liability, a poor reputation will remain forever. People will drive their names in the search and see that they participated in falsification of the elections.

There is a misunderstanding of the importance of observing the elections. For example, my parents confront him all the time while I am doing this. But the worse the situation in the country, the more people gradually understand the value of this work.

Despite the misunderstanding, I am a global optimist. I believe in people, so I continue to observe. Recently, in my social networks, I asked for financial support, and I was surprised by the number of people who wanted to help me. I was shocked. If I stay in Russia in September 2023, I will definitely continue to watch the elections.

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