"Invalid Citizens"

The reason for the removal of independent candidates from the elections to the Moscow City Duma was a check on unreliable data from the Federal Migration Service

The reason for the removal of independent candidates from the elections to the Moscow City Duma was a check on unreliable data from the Federal Migration Service

This summer, independent politicians clashed with United Russia, disguised as self-nominated candidates, in an unequal struggle. Instead of going to the seaside, they invested their savings in an election fund or enlisted the support of donors, gathered around them a team of activists doing civic duty, unrolled the cubes in the rain and in the sun and began to collect signatures. But the circumstances were against them: the June holidays, trips to summer cottages and vacations, and most importantly, the 3% barrier, which experts initially called "protective" for opposition candidates.

Most of the independent candidates for deputies of the Moscow City Duma, unlike those supported by United Russia (all of them, of course, passed the test), voluntarily withdrew from the race. They lacked some 500 signatures or a couple of days to collect them. Maria Gaidar (district No. 43: Arbat, Presnya, Khamovniki) and Olga Romanova (district No. 44: Zamoskvorechye, Tagansky, Tverskoy, Yakimanka) went all the way: neighbors in the districts submitted the required number of signatures to the district election commission, but a couple of days later they were refused . The commission considered them a "marriage".

Maria Gaidar instead of the prescribed 4491 submitted 5000 signatures to the district electoral commission - with a margin. This is not so little, considering that, say, Sergei Sobyanin won 20,000 votes in the same constituency in the mayoral elections last year.

20.1% of the signatures that the voters put in support of the nomination of Gaidar, the commission declared invalid. This is twice the legal limit. However, it should be recalled that according to the results of the initial verification, the commission rejected 22.5% of the signatures. Gaidar then managed to appeal this decision and reduce the marriage rate, but not to such an extent as to get on the ballot.

The authenticity of the signatures of self-nominated candidates supported by United Russia, unlike Gaidar, who was checked by seven (!) graphologists, was not checked by anyone (there are courts on this issue now). For comparison, the head of the Interregional Association of Voters, lawyer Andrei Buzin, cites an example from the recent past. In 2013, the then candidate for mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, collected 80,000 voter signatures in support of his nomination. “When the issue of his registration was being considered,” recalls Buzin, who was at that time a member of the IPCC, “I asked if handwriting experts checked his signatures for authenticity. To which the head of the working group answered me: no, the signatures were very accurate. The more accurate the signature, according to the lawyer, the more suspicions that they are drawn in the classical way: in passport offices or using the databases of Sberbank, social insurance funds. By the way, it was precisely for this reason that Gaidar did not offer the commission about 600 signatures in her support - they were perfect, without blots.

Another factor that testifies to the biased attitude of the district commission towards real politicians is the violation of the principle of collegiality in the work of this body. The decision on the final protocol - to allow Gaidar to register or not - was made at midnight by two people instead of the required thirteen. The fateful certificate from the Office of the Federal Migration Service (UFMS), which fell into their hands that evening, as it turns out, contained a huge number of absurd statements.

Of the 860 signatures that were invalidated on the basis of "the discrepancy between the data of the voters indicated in the signature list and the data of the Federal Migration Service", Gaidar's team found 280 that can be challenged.

So, for example, in 144 cases, the FMS certificate says that citizen Ivanov with such and such a passport is, in their database, citizen Sidorova with a completely different passport. “Why is Ivanov's signature not accepted on this basis? None of the commission thought about what a silly letter came to them from the FMS, and all the people from the certificate were entered into the protocol as invalid, ”complains Buzin.

In addition, there are numerous typographical errors in the FMS data, which were made when the TEC system administrator transferred data from signature sheets to an electronic form for verification (for example, the voter's middle name or passport series was transferred incorrectly). All these inconsistencies led to the fact that this voter was not found in the FMS database, and, consequently, his signature was invalidated.

One of the residents of the district, Irina, changed her passport in 2013, but her old passport is listed in the FMS database, which should be updated once a month. Another resident, Viktor, with the help of a passport issued in 2002, took part in voting in the elections to the Moscow City Duma in 2009, to the State Duma in 2011 and the president in 2012. Passport has always been accepted. In the case when he decided to cast his vote in support of Gaidar, his passport was declared invalid for no reason at all. Gaidar and her team believe that it is impossible to rely on the “migration” check when making a decision to refuse registration. The FMS database has not been updated since 2012.

This week, Gaidar filed a lawsuit to cancel the decision of the electoral committee to the Moscow City Court and an application to the Investigative Committee - she demands to conduct a trial and determine who is to blame for the distortion of the data submitted to the FMS. “I am not ashamed of my signatures. I can't show them because they are personal data. But I am proud of each of them. We had mistakes, because we really collected them: people stood in the rain, recorded while standing, they could be sealed. But I know that they are honest and clean, they were collected in sufficient numbers for registration,” she says. According to Gaidar, officials should be held accountable - either for falsification or negligence.

The voters who gave their signature for Olga Romanova and were recognized as "dead" by the election commission intend to go to court themselves to prove that they exist. “This will not affect my registration in any way, but let them be more careful with citizens in the future,” Romanova notes.