Tea with ticks

PEC is a family business

Tea with ticks. The precinct election commission is a family into which strangers are not allowed. They show them figs, dream of getting rid of them, but forced to reckon with them
March 3, 9.00. The chairman of the polling station Rustem Engalychev brings a box of provisions to the school - several loaves of raw -button sausage, bread, cheese, sprats, tea, coffee, crackers. We sit down to breakfast. The commission has 15 people. Kostyak - employees of Socium LLC - the management company Housing and Public Utilities, which serves 58 houses in the Krasnoselsky district of Moscow.

10.00. In the gym - tables for members of the commission, two transparent urns. Cabinets for voting with curtains. In the red corner - two tiny camcorders promised by Putin.

Women are seated, get a pack of brown craft packages with voting ballots and stamps. The usual movements are glued to brands on ballots for the presidential election. And on the ballots in the municipal elections are put printing. Voters are suitable for absenteeism. Of those 60 that TIK (territorial election commission) issued in our PEC, only five were left by Saturday. Rustem Ibragimovich goes to TIC for additional.

Members of the commission calculate the votes for Zhirinovsky alien when you have been inside the commission, you feel a strange sensation. It seems that you are about to grab something significant and you will understand where falsifications take place. But no. The commission is a family whose members know the rules of the game well and do not allow strangers to themselves. They do not answer unnecessary questions. And only by chance it is possible to notice which "soup" is cooked here. Here, for example, the elderly teacher from school on Leninsky Prospekt complains: the director forced everyone to take absenteeism and without fail to arrive on Sunday to vote to work. “The director said that it was necessary to put a checkmark for Putin. But I’ll take it and vote for another, ”the teacher braveled. I ask: why does she drag on Leninsky on a weekend when you can vote here on Sretenka. "They can fire, and where will I go?" - The answer, which in the last month I heard dozens of times.

Victoria Ivleva, a member of the commission with the right of an advisory vote, appears on the site. She has a short haircut, a camera, a folder with voting laws, memos for observers. She resolutely goes to the members of the commission. They look at her, as an enemy inhabited by someone else's intelligence, refuse to introduce themselves, with difficulty hiding irritation. Ivleva hands them the appeal of human rights activists who call for members of the election commission not to engage in falsifications.

13.00. The seals on the ballots are set, the stamps are glued, the commission goes to the dining room to drink tea. “God forbid the second round,” Mrings Evgenia Yakovlevna, an elderly woman in a green jacket. She has been working in the elections since the 90s, she knows all the subtleties. He assures that falsifications in the PECs are impossible. The pretty Vika sighs: “Tomorrow in the morning I will drink valerian. Observers will run up, skirmishes, fights, provocations will begin to arrange. ” There were only two observers in the parliamentary campaign on this site. The commission voted together for their removal. As a result, United Russia received 72% of the vote. One of the best results in Moscow.

"And who will you vote for?" - asks Sveta, wife of an employee of the Prosecutor General. Everyone is silent. Sveta works in the commission at the request of her husband. She quickly finds her tongue with housing and communal services. I clearly cause wariness. And when, forgetting that “Fair Russia” sent me to the election commission, I say that I am going to vote for Prokhorov, they look at me as an alien.

16.00. I eat at the chairman - I go to my election room for the absenteeism. He lets me out surprisingly eagerly. On Sunday morning, I understand why.

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They shook and screamed, hid books from me so that I could not see the additional list, and I stood and repeated monotonously: “You violate the law, violate the law!”

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At home on March 4. 7.30–10.00. The site is full of observers and journalists: fifteen people. I attach to table No. 1, where they vote according to the absenteeism and on an additional list - two military units are attached to the PEC No. 55. I well remember that on Saturday the voters were 2622. I ask Evgenia Yakovlevna - she sits at table No. 1 - where is 106 extra surnames in the list. “Yesterday a telephone message from TIK came and we were transferred more than 100 statements, these are people from enterprises.”

There is a line near the table: they go with absenteeism, the military with their wives, employees of enterprises, prescribed who in Mordovia, some in the Murmansk region. I decide to go with a remote urine, similar to a canister with gasoline. From older people who want to vote at home, 67 statements came to the PEC - twice as much as December 4. With me, the prosecutor's wife of Light and the observer Marina. Leaving the hall, I say Ivleva: "At the table No. 1 - falsification."

10.30–15.00. In the skyscraper on Sadovaya-Sukharevskaya live many old people-the former Soviet nomenclature. In five hours of walking in the entrances - 20 apartments. A strong impression: the smell of medicines, cats, pensioners in bike and terry dressing gowns, placing ticks and crosses for Putin. They complain about life, about the fact that they have to choose municipalities, about which they exactly know nothing.

A heavy man reports that they are with Putin “one suit”, he, too, from organs and will vote for the prime minister. He stuffs the ballot into a hungry urn, and then stuffed us with sloppy jokes for another ten minutes.

A 90-year-old blind grandmother with a bearded grandson in a bright yellow tie lives in a neighboring apartment. Grandma takes the ballot and asks her grandson to show where the count for Putin. "Look for your Putin yourself!" He answers. Granny begins to cry: "Well, show me, because I do not see!" We silently wait: we have no right to give advice. “Here he is, your Putin,” the grandson took pity. “Put a cross for him.”

"And for whom?" - I ask the bearded in a yellow tie. “No one, I have been separated from this state for 20 years,” he says.

The secretary of the commission (left) shows the figures to the observers of dopspics 15.30. We return to the PEC. During our absence, Ivlev “put on my ears” the entire commission. Television and deputies came. “The members of the commission chic and yelled, hid books from me so that I could not see the additional list,” she says in the women's toilet, where we are hiding to exchange impressions. - And I stood and repeated monotonously: "You violate the law, violate the law!" And so a few hundred times. I called the tick, turned on the speakerphone, I said what was happening on the site. The head of the commission was ordered to give me a copy of the additional list. Letters from employers were written on forms with an illegible address or without an address in general, without signatures. The reason why they should vote here: "I work in the CAO." There is not a word about the continuous cycle company. ”

These half -wound voices, as well as the votes of the military attributed to our site, gave the extra piggy bank an extra 200 vote. And, apparently, they left Putin. Maybe if there were no observers, there would be more such votes ...

20.00–8.00. Bulletins are dumped from urns to a large table. We put them in heaps. Members of the commission

They are whispering: "Look, how much for Prokhorov!" The ballots are folded in five stacks. The piles of Prokhorov and Putin are almost equal. The calculation begins. Observers, headed by the tireless Ivleva, force the commission to act according to the law - to read out the surnames of each of the candidates aloud. The commission hates them, but obeys. Putin has 667, Prokhorov has 457. Applause. “We have a second round,” I say. They look at me like a crazy one: “43% for Putin is normal for Moscow,” one of them exhortes me. Observers require a copy of the protocol.

4.00. The chairman calls. Allows the municipal voices to count. We count until eight in the morning. I fall asleep, the observer from the deputy Bogatyrev wakes me up, clapping me on the back. I shudder and wake up. And I put it, I put the sticks ... But Bogatyrev does not go to the municipal meeting.