Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin filed a complaint that experts have the right to invalidate voter signatures. The decision does not change even if the person personally confirms his autograph. But this is the result of law enforcement practice; the law does not contain such provisions, CEC members note.

The Constitutional Court will decide whether voters will be able to personally certify the authenticity of their signatures submitted for parties or candidates. Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin filed a complaint. Currently, by law, a forensic expert can invalidate voter signatures.

This decision will not change even if citizens come to the Central Election Commission in person to confirm their signatures, said Grigory Melkonyants, executive director of the human rights organization Golos.

“Any criminologist will tell you that it is impossible to verify from one signature whether the signature was made by the person himself or whether it is a forgery.

It turns out that this forensic expert, and by and large, it is not even clear who checks these signatures, takes a huge number of signatures, looks through them and chooses at his discretion a signature, which, at his discretion, is fake. Accordingly, the signature is recognized as such only in his expert opinion,” he noted.

According to Elena Dubrovina, a member of the Russian Central Election Commission, the law places expert opinions on a par with other evidence.

“In the current legislation there is no such rule that only an expert can confirm the authenticity of a signature, but the voter himself cannot.

Practice followed this path, and for many years. At first they were quite loyal to the fact that a person comes and says, yes, this is my signature, I support this candidate. But then it went in a different direction, and sometimes even, and I was a witness to this, it was stated: how can you prove that this is your signature? We don’t believe you, we need to conduct an examination first,” she noted.

The reason for the complaint to the Constitutional Court was the appeal of Yabloko party member Andrei Skorkin and non-party candidate Tatyana Kondratkina. Two years ago they were denied registration as deputies of the St. Petersburg municipal council. The voters' signatures were invalidated by forensic experts. The voters themselves came to court, but the decision did not change.

Voters will be given back their personal signature rights.