Translated material
creative handwriting
In the signature sheets of candidate Kasyanov, the Central Election Commission found the names of the heroes of Saltykov-Shchedrin
Phenomenal information openness was demonstrated yesterday by the Central Election Commission, which, apparently, will on Sunday deny ex-Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov the right to run in the presidential elections on March 2. The head of the department, Vladimir Churov, held a briefing yesterday, to which, in addition to ordinary writers, heads of the country's leading printed publications and television channels were invited. Mr. Churov, along with his deputy Stanislav Vavilov and CEC Secretary Nikolai Konkin, treated the journalists to tea, coffee and cookies and tried to convince them that the matter of registering Mr. Kasyanov as a presidential candidate did not have any political overtones.Yesterday, the investigative department of the Investigative Committee under the Russian Federation Prosecutor's Office for the Yaroslavl Region opened a criminal case on the fact of forging voter signatures in support of Mikhail Kasyanov. “A criminal case has been initiated under Part 2 of Article 142 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (falsification of election documents, referendum documents),” the department said in a statement. According to investigators, in the first half of January in the region, including in Rybinsk, “a group of people, by prior conspiracy, forged and certified voters’ signatures on signature sheets to support Mikhail Kasyanov’s self-nomination for the post of president in the March 2 elections.” By law, the presidential candidate himself does not bear criminal liability for “poor quality” signatures in his support.
As is known, in the first batch of “Kasyanov’s” autographs, according to the Central Election Commission, 15.57% of unreliable and invalid signatures were found, with the permitted maximum of 5%. The second sample of autographs is now being checked, but the candidate's fate is practically sealed. This immediately gave rise to rumors that the Kremlin was not allowing the overly “disagreeing” ex-prime minister to run in the elections. In an effort to ward off suspicions of political bias from the Central Election Commission, Nikolai Konkin said that, together with the TsIK specialists, experts from the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Justice, the bailiff service and the penitentiary service were also working on checking autographs. They all have to work double shifts. Signatures are considered invalid if there are irregularities in their execution: the date of birth, place of residence and other necessary data are not entered. This means that the information was taken by falsifiers from old databases.
If handwriting experts believe that someone else signed for a person, the autograph is considered unreliable. At the same time, the law does not require a written conclusion on the conduct of a handwriting examination - it is enough to make a decision “based on knowledge and inner conviction.” After these words of Mr. Konkin, light laughter swept through the hall, although the wording is legal. Too many people recently heard the words of Central Election Commission member Gennady Raikov that the experts involved in the work know their job so well that “they don’t need any magnifying glass, they can see everything right away.”
Vladimir Churov also reported that the Central Election Commission has already received many “signals” from regional law enforcement agencies that falsification of signature sheets is being organized in different subjects of the federation. “However, even in this case, we do not have the right to voluntarily check folders with signatures from these regions,” Mr. Churov noted. “We only check those that the machine indicates during the random sampling procedure.”
Of the 62 thousand “Kasyanovsky” signatures rejected by the CEC experts, 32 thousand were not recognized as valid because there was no information about their collectors. Such a serious violation forces experts to automatically reject the entire subscription sheet or even the entire folder. The lion's share of these inaccuracies comes from folders from the Tver region: about 28 thousand signatures had to be sifted out there. Another 10.5 thousand were rejected because the signature and date of its entry were made by different persons. But the signature and date are the only things that the voter writes on the sheet with his own hand; all other columns are filled out by the collector. Can graphologists, without a handwriting sample, find out whether one person or different people drew a squiggle and several numbers? During the parliamentary campaign, parties whose signature lists were rejected on this basis asked themselves the same question. As Mr. Churov reminded reporters, the Supreme Court then decided the case in favor of the Central Election Commission and handwriting experts.
At this point, the “sharks of the pen” offered to check the experts by signing for each other on a piece of paper, and even passed the list around. Vladimir Churov took him with him and promised to test graphologists for professional suitability as soon as they were free. “And we’ll put the right to publish the results up for auction!” - he joked.
At the end of the event, the head of the Central Election Commission personally led journalists to the basements of the building on Bolshoy Cherkassky, where boxes with subscription sheets are stored. The autographs of Mr. Kasyanov and his rival, the self-nominated leader of the Democratic Party Andrei Bogdanov, were stacked in one room. In a prominent place stood a box with autographs from Mari El that reached the Central Election Commission - it was not opened, although in Yoshkar-Ola the prosecutor's office suspects Rustam Abdullin, the head of Mr. Kasyanov's local election headquarters, of forging signatures. Mr. Churov willingly showed the folders to the guests, but asked not to read the voters’ passport details, so as not to accidentally violate the confidentiality of personal information. But the press was shown the pride of the inspectors - signatures belonging to citizens Ferdyshchenko and Brudasty, that is, the heroes of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s “History of the City of Foolov”. The literary names of Mr. Kasyanov's unknown fans interested well-read experts, and they ran the passport numbers through the Ministry of Internal Affairs database. As one might expect, Ferdyshchenko and Brudasty never lived in the Tver region. The autographs were in different folders, far from each other, but when looking at them, skeptics admitted that Gennady Raikov was right: indeed, even without a magnifying glass it was clear that all the data on Shchedrin’s characters, including the date of signatures, were made by one not very skillful hand.
After this excursion, it is hardly appropriate to doubt that Mikhail Kasyanov will not become a candidate for the presidency of Russia this year. However, representatives of the Central Election Commission still continue to adhere to the version that “there is a chance.” But to implement it, it is necessary for Kasyanov’s comrades to bring the missing information to the Central Election Commission, primarily on the Tver region. Meanwhile, according to Mr. Churov, representatives of the ex-prime minister yesterday again mysteriously disappeared from the Central Election Commission and are not taking any part in the process.
For her part, Mr. Kasyanov’s assistant, Elena Dikun, assured a Vremya Novostei correspondent yesterday that the candidate’s representatives “are in direct contact with members of the Central Election Commission and resolve all issues promptly.” In particular, Ms. Dikun noted that the necessary information on the Tver region has already been provided to the CEC. “The decision on registration is political, and one person will make it,” she emphasized, apparently referring to the president.