Attendance is optional

Innovations in electoral legislation have not improved the quality of elections

According to experts from the Independent Institute of Elections, who analyzed the results of the regional elections on October 8, if existing political trends continue until the elections to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament will be at risk of delegitimation.

The institute compiled a “rating of the democracy of regional elections” and presented it at a press conference on Wednesday. According to the head of the institute, Alexander Ivanchenko, an original methodology was developed to assess the level of democracy of elections, taking into account the degree to which elections are close to generally accepted standards of free, honest and fair elections: competitiveness of elections, respect for the rule of law, representativeness of the elected body. True, the past election campaigns were compared with some “abstract value”, and not with ideal democracy. And expert of the Independent Institute of Elections, candidate of political sciences Alexander Kynev explained that experts tried to assess how regions behave within the framework of an undemocratic federal system.

According to the study results, the Republic of Tyva performed the worst. For example, on the item “openness of election commissions,” the republic scored 2.2 points out of five possible, and for “organization of the campaign (equality and fairness),” political scientists awarded the region two points out of ten. The Astrakhan region turned out to be the most democratic region - out of 100 possible total points, it scored 67.3.

True, according to the head of the directorate of election campaign monitoring programs of the Independent Institute of Elections, Arkady Lyubarev, for example, equality and fairness were determined quite simply: the amount of material in the media about candidates, the reaction of election commissions to their actions and the “honesty of the judicial system” in case of refusals of registration were assessed . At the same time, experts claim the uniqueness of the developed criteria for assessing the democratic nature of elections. “In Russia there are no detailed characteristics of elections,” Mr. Ivanchenko complained. - We are judged by Western standards, which are not always applicable to Russian reality. For example, from the point of view of legislation, we have nothing to learn from the United States, but we do not have a well-functioning system of interaction between the authorities, the media and the courts.”

A comparison based on the parameters created by the experts themselves allowed us to draw several basic conclusions about the effectiveness of innovations in electoral legislation, first tested in the autumn campaign. It turned out that the division of party lists into regional groups leads to a greater number of refusals of mandates after the elections. “Since each regional group requires its own “locomotive,” more candidates refuse their mandate after the elections,” explained Arkady Lyubarev. “The division into groups did not save us from the dominance of candidates from the regional center (it was assumed that such a division would increase the representativeness of the territories in the local legislative assembly. - Ed .) - anyway, after the elections, the overwhelming majority of people from the capital of the subject end up in parliament.”

According to Alexander Kynev, the restrictions introduced in the electoral legislation played a role in low turnout, which is beneficial to the party in power when a certain category of voters comes to vote. At the same time, as soon as turnout begins to grow, all restrictions, including the abolition of the “against everyone” line, begin to work against United Russia. As an example, Mr. Kynev cited the Samara mayoral election campaign, where in the second round, for the first time in many years, voter turnout exceeded the first round by 4%, and the Party of Life candidate, who fought against United Russia, ultimately won: “As soon as the people they understand that they have a chance to change something, they go to the polls and vote.”

United Russia also drew conclusions for itself. Yesterday, the working group of the State Duma Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building approved a proposal to abolish the norm on minimum voter turnout for elections. As the head of the committee, Vladimir Pligin, explained, it is proposed to exclude the norm on a minimum turnout of 20% from the basic law on basic guarantees of electoral rights: “Thus, for example, in the law on the elections of deputies, such barriers will not be established.”

Daria GUSEVA