Translated material
Screening campaign
Two-thirds of attempts by nanoparties to get into regional parliaments ended in failure at the registration stage
Starting tomorrow, the circle of candidates for deputies of regional parliaments, who will be elected on October 12 in five regions of the country, can be considered defined. This was stated yesterday by the Chairman of the Central Election Commission Vladimir Churov. Registration of candidates ends on September 11 in the Kemerovo region; even earlier, the election commissions of the Irkutsk and Sakhalin regions, Trans-Baikal Territory and Chechnya completed this task.As in the federal center, the political palette in the regions is not very diverse. All five campaigns invariably involve the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Liberal Democratic Party, United and A Just Russia - four large parliamentary parties that do not need to collect signatures or raise money for a deposit to register a list of candidates. In addition, eight more “small parties” tried to achieve registration in different regions. The result of this struggle is as follows: eight refusals and six registrations, one of them on a pledge. Plus, in the Trans-Baikal Territory, the Green party announced its participation in the campaign, but did not submit the required package of documents to the election commission, apparently failing to collect the required number of signature sheets or a large amount for a deposit. Thus, out of 15 attempts by non-parliamentary parties to enter regional politics, two thirds failed at the first stage.
All eight registration refusals were related to verification of signature sheets. Judging by the data of the Central Election Commission, vigilant regional commissions were able to identify an incredible percentage of defects in autographs given by party members. Thus, 19.4% of unreliable and invalid signatures were found in the documents of the Greens in Chechnya, 23% in the Patriots of Russia in the Irkutsk region, almost a third in the Democratic Party in Transbaikalia, as well as in Sakhalin at Yabloko "and the same "Patriots". The percentage of defects of the “Union of Right Forces” in the Kemerovo region is off the charts - 63.6% of “bad” autographs. In addition, the “rightists” were not allowed to participate in the elections of deputies to the Stavropol Duma. As stated by the party's lawyer Vadim Prokhorov, the Union of Right Forces does not agree with these decisions and is going to defend in court the right of its candidates to be elected.
The most diverse - if this word is appropriate in this context - composition of parties participating in the elections will be in Chechnya, where, in addition to parliamentary ones, Patriots of Russia, People's Union, as well as the Party of Peace and Unity of Sazha Umalatova made it to the ballot. However, if we take into account the local characteristics of the electoral behavior of citizens, there is no doubt that even with such a wealth of choice, the residents of Chechnya will not have difficulty identifying the most worthy candidates.
Agrarians will coexist with four federal giants in Transbaikalia, and in the Irkutsk region the Greens will join the APR. Finally, only parliamentary parties received registration in the Kemerovo and Sakhalin regions. Despite this, Vladimir Churov was not embarrassed by the journalists’ question about the paucity of the political landscape. “And in America, the president is generally elected by only two parties! - was his answer. “Our competition is higher.” Mr. Churov also recommended “waiting for the end of judicial procedures,” meaning the possibility of registering refuseniks by court decision, although this has practically never happened in recent political history.
In total, on October 12, 6,448 expressions of will of various scales, from regional to municipal levels, will be held. Vladimir Churov focused the attention of the press on the elections of deputies to the municipal assembly of the city of Novomoskovsk, Tula region. There it is planned to conduct an experiment on Internet voting, which the Central Election Commission prefers to call neutrally - “electronic polling of voters.”
The essence of the experiment is this: at a number of polling stations, all voters will be asked, after fulfilling their civic duty, to take with them a special disk with a program that, when activated, allows them to send an electronic ballot via the Internet from any computer. The disk is equipped with degrees of protection, including the use of an electronic digital signature, and the miracle program is one-time use and self-destructs. You can only submit your ballot once. The organizers of the experiment claim that the survey will be completely anonymous, and no malicious virus will get onto the disk.
True, the public will not know how many votes online voters will cast for a particular candidate. This information will not be made public, allegedly because young active Internet users (who are most likely to take part in the experiment) are not a representative sociological sample. But researchers will analyze the number of voters via the Internet. Vladimir Churov noted that he would consider it a great success if at least 10% of voters took part in the experiment.