The right challenged the voting results in the Volgograd region

Yesterday in Volgograd, the leaders of the regional branches of the Yabloko and Right Cause parties announced that they would seek through the court to have the results of the State Duma elections on December 4 declared invalid, since their results are contradictory and unreliable. Experts doubt that the parties will succeed, although vote manipulation has damaged the reputation of the election system on the eve of the presidential campaign. The regional election commission does not comment on the situation.

Volgograd party leaders Galina Boldyreva (Yabloko) and Andrei Kuprikov (Right Cause) announced the filing of the claim and their motives yesterday at a press conference in Volgograd. Once again recalling violations during the elections, party members questioned the reliability of the results declared by the regional election commission. Mrs. Boldyreva explained that she intends to protect the rights of citizens. And Mr. Kuprikov, defending the purity of the numbers, is trying to save the government from discrediting it with illegal voting results. “This is an attempt to stop the delegitimization of power,” he explained. The parties noted that they do not expect a sharp increase in their results during the new vote count (according to the regional election commission, Yabloko received 5.73% of the votes in the region, Right Cause - 0.76%. - Kommersant) .

Mrs. Boldyreva clarified to Kommersant that the statement of claim was filed in the regional court on her behalf as a candidate for State Duma deputy. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for December 15. The interested party is the election commission. But yesterday they did not comment on the lawsuit, citing the fact that the chairman of the regional election commission was on a business trip.

In her statement of claim, Galina Boldyreva recalled two significantly different voting results presented by the regional election commission, each of which was presented as final. The first result was announced on the morning of December 7 after a recount of votes on December 6-7, as a result of which, compared with the preliminary results in the automated information system of the State Automated System "Elections", the number of counted ballots increased, as follows from the application to the court, by 168 thousand ( turnout increased by more than 8%), and United Russia's total increased by about 7%.

But later that evening, the lawsuit says, those results were overturned, returning to virtually the result before the recount. To this end, as follows from the statement of claim, the Electoral Commission issued Resolution No. 24/117-5 dated December 7, 2011, which canceled the results of the recount, allegedly due to violations committed during it. Ms. Boldyreva insists that this resolution is illegal, since individual violations are not grounds for canceling the entire recount. In general, as stated in the lawsuit, “the violations committed in establishing the voting results do not allow us to reliably determine the number of citizens who voted and the results of the expression of the will of voters themselves.” In connection with this alleged uncertainty of the results, Galina Boldyreva asks the court to cancel the voting results in Volgograd and Volzhsky, where the recount was carried out, and also to recognize the elections to the State Duma as invalid.

Parliamentary opposition parties did not support this initiative. A Just Russia, having specified that the party had filed over 15 thousand complaints to various authorities, reported that in general the results would not be contested. The LDPR noted that it is necessary to recount votes in those polling stations where there are grounds for this. It was not possible to contact the regional branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation yesterday, but earlier the communists also announced their intention to challenge the voting results in individual TECs or precincts. United Russia did not comment on the situation yesterday.

“The main result of the manipulation of votes, which has become obvious, is the discrediting of the electoral system in the region on the eve of the big presidential elections,” says political scientist Andrei Rogozhin. In general, the expert associates the parties’ demarche with their own results. “For now these are outsiders of the political process. They are trying to use the wave of spontaneous indignation of people to strengthen their political positions. But they are unlikely to be able to attract other parties to their coalition,” says the political scientist.

Elena Zavyalova

"Yabloko" got involved in the elections