How the opposition will conduct its all-Russian elections

On October 7, Putin's birthday and a week before the single voting day, the Russian non-systemic opposition is preparing to hold its own nationwide elections for its new united body, the Coordination Council. Any citizen will be able to register as a voter and vote for the 45 council members. 30 of them are elected according to the list of general civil forces, another 15 - according to quotas from three ideological curiae: liberals, leftists and nationalists - 5 people from each.

“We call the government illegitimate because they rigged the elections,” Alexei Navalny wrote on his blog . “But we ourselves didn’t have any elections. Complete self-seizure. So let’s hold these elections.”

The recently registered Republican Party of Russia, the People's Freedom Party, called the idea of ​​general elections of opposition leaders a “mistake.” “Any competitive procedures conflict with the principles of consolidation and the broadest possible representation of citizens’ interests in the protest movement,” the party bureau said in a statement . Two members of the Parnassus bureau - Boris Nemtsov and Ilya Yashin - did not obey the party decision and announced their participation in the primaries. "If the opposition says that 'the use of electoral procedures is a mistake,' then what is it blaming Putin for?" - Navalny responded to this. “He has the same approach: fair elections will create instability, which blah blah blah.”

The central election committee of the opposition was headed by Yekaterinburg City Duma deputy Leonid Volkov. He told PublicPost how the committee intends to organize alternative elections in which a million people could take part.

— It would be logical to assume that you will be one of the candidates for the Coordination Council, and you became the head of the election commission. How did this happen?

At the same time, several people sent me to look at draft documents - one of the authors there wrote such a childish, ridiculous provision on how to conduct opposition elections. Well, I wrote to everyone: “This is complete crap - sometimes it’s not right, sometimes it’s not right.” Then I came to the committee, spoke, after which, according to the principle “initiative is punishable,” I was brought in.

— Since you are the head of the commission, you can no longer be a candidate. Is it a pity to give up the opportunity to take part in the elections?

I don’t want to run for office, I’ve had enough.

— And by the way, people are already voting for you on Facebook.

Voting on Facebook is funny. I really don’t like all this, it discredits the idea, because everyone thinks that this is what opposition primaries should look like. Voting on Facebook is an example of what not to do. It is completely unclear how the list of candidates was compiled - absolutely voluntaristically. It is not clear how the order of candidates on the list is determined; there is no description, biography, program, you can tick as many boxes as you like, and so on.

People think that this is voting. And this is not a vote; it does not meet democratic standards. I need verified accounts, a limited list of candidates who are in more or less equal conditions, so that certain information is available about each candidate - biographical, programmatic. Here we are choosing 45 out of 100 candidates...

— Why did you decide that there would be exactly 100 candidates?

Well, I just have a feeling that there will be about 100 people.

- What kind of body will this be - the Coordination Council? What will they actually choose: a parallel parliament, more representative and legitimate from the point of view of voters, an organizing committee for protest actions, a shadow government?

My task is to organize these elections so that they go off without a hitch. When we demanded fair elections in the winter, they told us: “Where are they, these fair elections of yours? Yes, there is fraud everywhere, and hell knows what.” I may be taking on too much, but I am interested in precisely this part of the task - to show that fair, perfectly organized elections do exist. This will be an amazing tap on Churov’s nose - to show that civil society is able to organize itself and produce a higher quality product than the state produced. This time.

And two: I only have two months - and technical issues are beyond the roof. I don't want to concentrate on political issues. This is not for me. Why this design? Why 45 seats? The organizing committee decided. Why three curiae? The organizing committee decided. What will the Coordination Council do? Ask the organizing committee.

- And yet , what kind of organ could this be? It is important for people to understand exactly whom they choose and for what purposes.

What will come out of this Coordination Council follows from three questions: first, who will be there; secondly, what content they themselves will be able to fill their activities with; and thirdly, what will happen in the country. It’s not a fact that the council will be effective - we’ll see who passes. What content will they be able to fill their activities with? It all depends on how modest they are: the government is weak, the situation is amorphous, and they can grab more. Will they be able to grab more? Not clear. Well, what will happen in the country - either there will be a terrible end, or horror without end.

Many people look at this as an improved version of the organizing committee - an organizing committee that has confirmed its authority: like, we can “better” coordinate the dates of rallies, because our authority is now somehow confirmed. Someone certainly wants to make a shadow parliament out of this. This is a completely different story: the shadow parliament considers the same bills as the Duma, and makes alternative decisions or passes a law on lustration - which, in my opinion, would be very useful. Or maybe this will be a real negotiation platform. Or maybe this will be a real parliament, because everything will be fucked up, and this body will have to say in person: “Now we are the most legitimate of the existing bodies, and therefore we are the power here.”

- Legitimate? What kind of legitimacy can we talk about if, a priori, this is a body elected by the opposition minority from among itself?

Let's return to the definition of the word "legitimacy", which is constantly misunderstood. Legitimacy is competence in the eyes of the voter. In the eyes of those who elected this body, it will be legitimate if it is confirmed that the elections were held fairly. If 10 people vote, it will be exactly as legitimate as if 10 million people vote. Only in one case will he be legitimate in the eyes of ten, and in the other - in the eyes of 10 million.

— Why separate the lists at all ? Why not everyone run on one general civil list? And so the forces that might not have passed will have their guaranteed 5 places. Do you think the principle of the three curiae is correct?

Yes, I think it's correct. It's a really fragile world there. The fact that people from three different directions are still sitting on the organizing committee - almost a year has already passed - without quarreling, the fact that they were able to agree on common rules and some kind of parity principles for their representatives is very cool.

— Will voters vote for each curia or for one of their choice?

There were big disputes, but I was able to push through so that everything was correct. There was an idea that the voter would have to identify himself with some kind of curia and take the general civil part of the ballot and one of three lists. And we were able to agree that each voter receives all 4 ballots. In the first case, what would happen: liberals would vote for liberals, leftists - for leftists, nationalists - for nationalists. And now it turns out that everyone votes for liberals, leftists and nationalists. That is, those nationalists will pass for whom both liberals and leftists are ready to vote, those liberals for whom both leftists and nationalists are ready to vote. That is, these 15 people elected from the curiae will be the most moderate and agreeable dudes - this is inherent in the design of the elections.

— Will there be a “against all” column?

No, those who don’t want to simply don’t register.

— As for voter verification , how will you achieve it? How to verify voter identity and the principle of “one person , one vote”?

It is impossible to verify the identity of a person if there has been no contact with him personally. We must face it, there must be a passport verification stage. Another thing is that in order for me to verify you, I don’t have to meet you personally - this can be done by an institution that we all trust by default. In the classics, this is an electronic signature - the certification center verified your identity, issued you an electronic signature, and you use it. In our country, more than 2 million electronic signatures have been issued and there are more than 300 certification centers, although the main carriers of electronic signatures are chief accountants and directors of enterprises who use it for tax reporting: they are not particularly needed for anything else, so no one uses them receives. We can also use these existing 2 million signatures.

Another body that is generally trusted is banks, and a large number of verification procedures are based on a banking link. You state that you want to be verified. We send you a random number - for example, 543. You send us 5 rubles 43 kopecks to our account. The extract we receive contains your last name, first name, and patronymic. But this is also not an online link: it is based on the fact that you once went to the bank, and the bank checked your passport.

- Well, okay, then what should grandmothers do who do not know how to use electronic signatures and bank cards, but want to vote, for example, for their beloved Udaltsov?

That's why we will have to drag the entire offline infrastructure too. Therefore, although I really don’t like it, we are creating a network of election commissions in the regions that will deal with offline voter registration and the organization of offline voting, although this is hellish hell. But this will allow you to answer all questions. Udaltsov will say: “What about my grandmothers?” — we will answer: “Offline commission.” Navalny will say: “But what about the office plankton who are too lazy to go to the commission?” We will answer: “Internet voting.”

— How many voters do you think you can attract?

There is a feeling that voting in elections is easier than going to a rally. If a total of 200,000 people came out to rallies at their peak throughout the country, then I don’t understand why a million people can’t vote here. A rally, after all, is a difficult thing from the point of view of motivation: if they shouted, they dispersed. And here you see the effect of your actions - specific people are elected to a specific body.

In our civil society in the opposition, everything is done unprofessionally, through the cracks, everything is done according to the method “hey, guys, let’s get busy - today we’ll do this, and tomorrow we’ll do that.” No one has ever tried to do large, long-term, large-scale projects. I have 10 people on my commission, and we are going to work for 2 months. We have never done projects lasting 20 person months. So I expect that we will have a lot of people. And if a million actually vote, that will be very cool.

— A million is very ambitious. Do you think that you can organize voting in all regions? How important is regional participation?

We will try to do it in all of them - I don’t know if it will work in all of them. It is clear that 80 percent of voters will be in Moscow - this is clear from the audience of the rallies. If we make 30 percent of voters not in Moscow, this will already be a great success.

— How will the candidates’ election campaign take place?

This will be interesting. These will be real elections. The main principle that I was able to achieve (everyone was against it, but I pushed through) is that we will not regulate what we cannot control. We do not have handwriting experts, so there will be no collection of signatures: 10 thousand rubles paid in fees - and you are a candidate. We don't have databases, so we won't check whether your curriculum vitae is correct or whether you have a fake diploma. We will not impose restrictions on campaigning and the size of the election fund. Conduct the election campaign as you want: steal, kill, kill geese. These will be real elections, that's great! Everyone will throw shit at each other, everyone will dig into incriminating evidence, everyone will lie to themselves about how good they are. This is the life-giving breath that we really need.

— Did you specifically schedule these elections on Putin’s birthday?

Well, this is such a working idea, yes. But in principle, the date is not final yet.