Context

The Central Election Commission (CEC) has adopted “reference and methodological material” on information and campaigning on the Internet: it is supposed to actually apply the same rules to them as to the media. The draft, presented by CEC member Maya Grishina, was adopted by the commission without comments yesterday. The document, which for the first time touches on the election campaign on the Internet, was adopted by the Central Election Commission on July 8. But the head of the Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, then recommended that the project be finalized, proposing to focus on establishing “the presence of false information” in election materials. His proposal was taken into account: the adopted document describes the consequences of spreading slander and the procedure for deleting data found to be unreliable. At the same time, the document states that a number of general rules apply to “the dissemination of election-related information on the Internet” (they also apply to the media). In terms of “informing voters”, this means observing the equality of candidates, the rules for publishing opinion polls (it is mandatory to indicate the output data, and polls cannot be published five days before the elections), and the ban on publishing voting results before the end of the election. In terms of campaigning, you can only use funds from the election fund and campaign within the established time frame (campaigning begins 28 days before voting day and is not allowed on the day of silence - on the eve of the elections). A member of the Central Election Commission with the right of advisory vote, Konstantin Mazurevsky, explained to Kommersant the relevance of the document by the fact that “the campaign Internet segment is actively developing.” At the same time, for now the document is of a reference nature, and not of the nature of “methodological recommendations,” which in the system of election commissions are considered a “more impressive document.” Adjustment of regulation in this regard may happen later: let us recall that the head of the Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, has repeatedly spoken about the need to remove the distinction between campaigning and information before the elections.

Maxim Ivanov

Bloggers have been granted pre-election status