Translated material
Don't throw money in the trash bin
The Central Election Commission promises to hold the next parliamentary elections economically
The Central Election Commission begins preparations for the 2011 federal elections to the State Duma. The project for logistical support for the future campaign has already been presented to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The head of the Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, announced this at yesterday's meeting with the chairmen of the election commissions of the constituent entities of the federation included in the Central Federal District. He explained that we are talking primarily about the logistics of the campaign, as well as the preparation of transport and voting premises.Mr. Churov promised to “evenly distribute new equipment” across election commissions at all levels within two years. In particular, it is planned to extend to the entire country the experience of the Volgograd and Tula regions, which at the last regional elections installed web cameras in a number of areas with live broadcast of images on the Internet, so that anyone could, via the World Wide Web, observe not only the voting process, but also for the counting of votes. “By the 2011 campaign, 10% of polling stations should be equipped with web cameras,” noted Vladimir Churov, “that is, only 10 thousand polling stations distributed evenly across the federal subjects, but somewhere there may be more, for example in Ingushetia and Chechnya." Obviously, they meant the republics, the excessively high turnout in which traditionally causes skepticism among the liberal public and experts. As for transport, Mr. Churov recalled the agreement with the Ministry of Emergency Situations on checking vehicles and equipping all vehicles with additional positioning devices.
The head of the Central Election Commission especially noted that the project presented to the Prime Minister provides for “maintaining expenses at the level of pre-crisis years.” De facto, taking into account inflation, this should mean cost savings of about 25%, and maybe more. “We must be prepared to conduct the 2011 campaign for exactly the same money that was allocated for the 2007 campaign, and without compromising the quality of the campaign and the constitutional rights of citizens,” Vladimir Churov emphasized. He promised his colleagues that “the Central Election Commission will control every penny in the most brutal way,” and recalled that during centralized inspections, the agency is already checking the targeted spending of funds not only from the federal budget, but also from regional and local budgets.
The head of the Central Election Commission concluded the financial part of his speech with an anti-corruption reminder that employees of election commissions at all levels should not accept not only money, but also valuable gifts from strangers. “Take the Central Election Commission museum as an example, where for two years now all gifts have been received, even expensive alcohol,” advised Mr. Churov. “We’ve been storing three liters of cognac for two years, people are walking around and licking their lips, but nothing can be done - an inventory number, a tag.”
The head of the Central Election Commission and his deputy Leonid Ivlev made a separate recommendation to the heads of election commissions regarding work with citizens with disabilities. In particular, it was mentioned that the CEC website now has a special section for the visually impaired. Mr. Churov demanded that the virtual pages of all commissions function in a similar mode by the end of the year.
In addition, the meeting discussed the topic of polishing the electoral legislation. The head of the Central Election Commission recalled the changes that were made to the legislation “in record time” when implementing the provisions defined by President Dmitry Medvedev in last year’s address to the Federal Assembly. This means increasing the term of office of the President and the State Duma, providing one or two mandates to small parties that received 5-7%, eliminating the electoral deposit and abolishing the norm on the return of funds for free campaigning for outsiders in parliamentary elections.
One of the latest norms was adopted to guarantee the equality of parliamentary parties when covering their activities in the media, the implementation of which is impossible without monitoring the mass media. Vladimir Churov promised that the draft methodology for such monitoring in the near future “will be submitted for approval to all registered parties.”
However, regarding another problem, an amendment to the current legislation has not yet been made, although the Central Election Commission has been calling for this to be done for several years now. We are talking about removing the system of election commissions from the scope of Federal Law No. 94 on placing orders for the supply of goods and performing services - in this case, this concerns primarily the printing of ballots. “There can be no misfires in the performance of such important government functions as the federal campaign,” explained Mr. Churov, answering a question from a Vremya Novostei correspondent. “There are specific facts where only at the cost of enormous efforts we managed to avoid the disruption of federal campaigns.”
But while the 2011 Duma campaign is still far away, the issue on the agenda is to bring the electoral system into combat readiness for the autumn single voting day. It will take place on October 11, 2009, when 2.5 thousand expressions of will of various levels will be held simultaneously.