Hunting to change urn

The CEC invited the St. Petersburg Horizburkom to resign, but who to wait for a replacement?

The Central Electoral Commission recognized the work of the St. Petersburg election commission and expressed distrust to the President of the GIK Viktor Minenko. The head of the CEC Ella Pamfilova recalled that the results of the work of the St. Petersburg election commission are recognized as unsatisfactory for the third time.

“Apotheosis was the situation with the additional elections of deputies of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, which did not take place due to the fault of the election commission. Six candidates and more than 70 thousand voters were deprived of the possibility of realizing their suffrage. The commission does not draw any conclusions. In this situation, we cannot inactive, ”said Pamfilova.

In her opinion, in this situation it would be “honestly and responsibly” not only to the chairman, but to his deputy, the secretary, and to many members of the commission to resign.

If this is not done, then the CEC reserves the right to file an application with the dissolution of the horizifications to the court.

It is worth noting that the formidable reaction was somewhat late ... Well, and - with all the claims to the horiz being - to start cycs, it would be worth it.

Even during the scandalous municipal elections of 2019, the city election commission looked at all the outrages with her eyes widely closed. She practically did not react when it was impossible to find out about the appointment of elections, when the issues of municipal newspapers were hidden with information that the elections were appointed when it was impossible to submit documents or when they were refused registration on absurd grounds.

And of course, the commission was inactive when the election results openly falsified, when members of the municipal commissions jumped out with the bags of ballots in the window, when the ballots were openly replaced, the protocols were corresponded - in general, everything that we saw more than once happened.

Several times followed the formidable shouts, some separate decisions of the cityizbirkom and municipal commissions were canceled by the CEC, sometimes the Gorizbirk himself abolished the decisions of municipal election commissions, but very often, instead of registering candidates independently, sent documents to the same election commissions of the municipality or refused to register opposition candidates illegally withdrawn from the elections. All this happened with the obvious reluctance of the CEC to intervene in what was happening, which turned into a chain of trials that stretch to this day.

About the same thing happened during the vote on amendments to the Constitution, when the deposit and courtyard voting without any control took place throughout the week with absurd results.

One of the most striking examples is when 450 ballots turned out to be in the central area in the urn for courtyard voting, and all as one - for amendments to the Constitution.

It is easy to calculate that the probability of such an event is so insignificant that mathematicians do not even know the designation for such infinitely small quantities.

Neither the city election commission nor the CEC reacted to any signals about the violations. They did not respond to the facts of the obvious coercion of state employees to early voting, they did not respond to a huge number of evidence, names, screenshots published in the media and the Internet of guidelines about how employees of budgetary institutions were obliged to vote early, and it was clear: for seven days the voting occurred in order to replace all these ballots.

He did not react to all this to the horiz being, did not notice any violations, no facts were allegedly confirmed. But the problem is that the central election commission also behaved exactly the same. Yes, the St. Petersburg opposition has a huge number of complaints to the horizificial committee, but the same number of claims to the CEC itself: if the CEC employees wanted to act absolutely honestly, they would have put their powers to begin with, and then they demanded this from the St. Petersburg Horizolistic Committee.

And now the most important thing: even if the CEC achieves in a voluntary or forced manner of the dissolution of the St. Petersburg Horizburkom, this will not affect, because with the current principle of forming a commission, one half of it is appointed by the governor, and the second - by Zaks, where the United Russia dominates.

It is completely clear that control over the horiz being on the part of the executive branch and United Russia will remain; In addition, she has already fulfilled the most “dirty” work from the latter, the Horizburkom of the entrusted to those entrusted: she formed additional territorial election commissions, where independent members of the commission represented by opposition parties were not actually allowed, but people who were repeated in falsifications entered there. Whether something will happen from the replacement of an awl with soap is a rhetorical question.

“The law on the formation of election commissions is written in such a way as to strengthen the administrative resource,” says Olga Pokrovskaya, a member of the Gorizbarkom from the Yabloko party. - The governor of the city and the legislative assembly appoint their representatives who fulfill the tasks set before them - in my opinion, they are completely professionally fulfilling. Yes, there are candidates whom they cannot but appoint - these are those who were proposed by political parties and the CEC. But the chairman of the commission was appointed precisely on the proposal of the Central Election Commission. And it is difficult for me to imagine that in the case of a commission of the commission, the same CEC will offer it in its composition of independent people. In any case, so far he has not offered such candidates.

However, the question of the fate of the current Horizburkom remains open.

The law on the guarantees of electoral rights admits the dissolution of the election commission in case of "failure to fulfill the commission by the commission on the appointment of elections that entailed the appointment of elections by the interim election commission."

But does the situation with the failed elections of the deputy of the ZAKS fall under this article? The Gorizbirk once decided to appoint them, but then all the electoral actions were suspended due to the increased readiness, in other words, due to restrictive measures in connection with pandemia. The terms and procedure for their renewal in the law are not spelled out, but in any case, no temporary election commissions that would make up for the omissions of the GIK create in St. Petersburg.

There were practically no precedents, when election commissions were disbanded by court decision. Although, of course, it is difficult to assume that Pamfilova acts with sharp statements, which will not follow at all. So, perhaps, some changes in the composition of the horizontal committee will happen ... The only problem is that in essence this will not change anything. Here, as in an old joke about a plumber - the whole system needs to be changed.