The election commission in Russia has ceased to mean anything, for them the fate of candidates is now decided by security forces

According to the law, the election committee is independent bodies whose purpose to limit the influence of the executive branch on the outcome of the elections and protect voters' rights. In fact, their “sovereignty” is not noticeable: in the dispute between the candidates and government agencies, the election commission, as a rule, sides the latter. The refusals of the commissions in registration are increasingly based on the decisions of the courts, the Ministry of Justice and the prosecutor's office, and the number of retired candidates is growing. The retired are those candidates who were excluded at the stage of submitting documents, anyone was denied registration, or those whose registration was canceled.

As of August 17, the number of retired - 244 potential candidates from federal lists - exceeded the 2016 indicator (234 people at the end of the campaign). And, apparently, there will be even more due to the withdrawal of candidates from the elections after registration: at the moment there are 12 such decisions, while five years ago their number reached 91.

Most of the disperses were about to run from non -parliamentary parties. By the decision of the CEC, the right to be elected to be refused only one candidate from the party represented in the State Duma - Pavel Grudinin from the Communist Party.

In total, on August 17, at the initiative of the CEC, 114 candidates left. Most of them did not allow the commission for some formal reasons at the stage of submitting documents.

At the stage of registration, the opportunity to participate in the campaign was deprived of 32 candidates. In 25 cases, the reason was a criminal record. At the same time, in the registered lists “Voice” ( recognized by the Ministry of Justice of the “Inoagent” ) counted 46 candidates who have or had a criminal record, who were allowed to the elections.

In the remaining seven cases, the CEC refused the registration candidates due to the availability of administrative punishment for “demonstrating Nazi symbols” (one candidate from “Yabloko”), the presence of foreign financial instruments (one candidate from the Communist Party and one from the “homeland”), the presence of foreign citizenship (two candidates from Yabloko, one from “new people”, one from the “homeland”).

Delegation of responsibility

On July 24, the CEC excluded Pavel Grudinin from the Federal List of the Communist Party. The reason was the information received from the Prosecutor General’s Office about the availability of accounts in foreign banks. At the same time, the party himself the candidate claimed that at the time of nomination, Grudinin got rid of these assets. The Chairman of the CEC, Ella Pamfilova, said that the commission makes a decision on the basis of the data of the Prosecutor General’s Office and has no right to “investigate and evaluate”.

The loss of the subjectivity of the CEC is repeatedly confirmed in a number of other cases:

- In case of refusal to register Sergei Kapchuk, a candidate from the Growth Party, the CEC referred to the 2019 sentence for fraud. At the same time, the commission did not take into account the retraining of the severity of the crime from the heavy to the middle, which allowed Kapchuk to participate in the elections. As a result, the candidate was forced to restore his rights through the Supreme Court, as a result of which he lost 10 days of the election campaign.

- The candidate from the Rodina party Dmitry Bulykin also had to dispute the decision of the CEC in the Supreme Court. The court sided with the candidate. Ella Pamfilova commented on the decision of the Armed Forces: “The CEC, making one or another decision, is obliged to be based on the conclusions of the corresponding department officially submitted in response to a request from the CEC. And we only welcome the court decision on the restoration of a candidate, taking into account additional circumstances. ”

Making a decision on the admission of candidates is one of the tasks of the election commission, the execution of which they often evade, transferring responsibility to state bodies or to the courts, while remaining unpunished. As a result of the decision of the commissions on the refusal may look more than unreasonable.

For example, on the claim of the candidate from the Green Party, Lev Schlosberg, who went to the State Duma from Yabloko, was removed from the election. The complaint, as the media writes , says the relationship of a policy with the FBC ( the organization is recognized as extremist and is included in the ministe in the list of foreign agents ). At the same time, Schlosberg not only has nothing to do with the organization, but also actively criticizes its activity.

The growth of the number of retired candidates is largely associated with restrictions on passive suffrage, about which the Voice wrote earlier. Their tightening was greatly influenced by the recognition of the FBK with an extremist organization, which allowed the Ministry of Justice to massively prevent Navalny’s supporters, withdraw their candidates after registration. And in general, this deprives 8% of Russian voters of the opportunity to run.

On July 30, also relying on the information of the Ministry of Justice, the election room of the Nizhny Novgorod region did not allow the defendant of the "sanitary case" Natalya Rezontov to the elections. The refusal is based on the involvement of the candidate from Yabloko in extremist organizations. The Nizhny Novgorod Regional Court recognized the decision of the election commission as legitimate, but the Ministry of Justice did not provide any evidence of Rezontova’s connection with the FBK.

The right to withdraw candidates due to cooperation with Navalny’s headquarters may help the authorities eliminate strong competitors in regions with a low rating of United Russia and the parties loyal for it. This happened in Yakutia, where there was a threat of removing from the elections of the former coordinator of the headquarters of Navalny Anatoly Nogovitsyn. The candidate from Yabloko, according to preliminary estimates, from the words of Nogovitsyn, received 37% of the vote.

At the same time, the “fair Russia” and the Communist Party are ready to support 26% and 7.8% of voters, and United Russia was able to gain only 83 votes.

According to a well -known scenario, the Ministry of Justice sent information about the involvement of Nogovitsyn in an extremist organization to the election. The candidate himself does not consider his connection with the regional headquarters of Navalny sufficient reason to withdraw from the elections: “Interaction with the FBK does not automatically record anyone in extremists, so they could not but register me. But after registration, it became clear that I have a high rating, and now they want to remove me from the elections for this reason. ”

Against the backdrop of the fall of the United Russia rating, according to Nogovitsyn, it seems that the authorities want to “clean the field”, that is, to eliminate opposition competitors and ensure a calm transition of the authorities in 2024. The lack of the former employees of Navalny’s headquarters to the State Duma elections is one of the steps in this direction.

The number of extensions is reduced

The readiness and possibility of potential candidates to participate in the elections, compared with the 2016 campaign, have significantly decreased. There are fewer notifications of nomination and registered candidates. At the same time, the number of registered self -nominates was broken by the 2016 anti -record: 11 people against 23 in 2016 throughout the country.

At the same time, parliamentary parties practically did not lose their positions. The fall of the number of nominees did not occur at their expense. This is most noticeable if we compare the number of districts by which the candidates are nominated: exactly five years ago, candidates from the State Duma factions went from almost all districts, despite the fact that the representative office of non -parliamentary parties was noticeably reduced.

One of the main reasons for reducing the number of candidates, as indicated in the report, is an increase in risks for the opposition. This is indicated by massive failures to advance among active opposition politicians.

For example, Dmitry Gudkov, who had searches on June 1, was forced to leave the country and refuse to participate in the elections. For various reasons, State Duma deputy Yevgeny Roizman, Novosibirsk deputy Sergei Boyko, as well as Alexey Vorsin from Khabarovsk, who is under house arrest, shot their candidates. Ilya Yashin also refused to participate in the elections to the State Duma (in the end, the policy was not given permission even to open the electoral account due to “extremism”).

There are cases when parties refuse to nominate well -known politicians. Some of the potential candidates associate this with a party pressure. The most loud was the story of the refusal of the Political Committee of Yabloko to approve the list of candidates proposed by the federal bureau. As a result, it was denied the nomination of Sergei Vlasov, Igor Drandin, Vadim Korovin, Alexei Minyailo, Oleg Stepanov and Denis Shenderovich. One of them, Igor Drandin, commented on the party’s decision: “About a month ago, from two independent sources, I received information that an instruction was sent from the presidential administration for all parties with a ban on nomination of those who participated in rallies in support of Alexei Navalny. Previously, these sources never deceived me. ”

Ivan Bolshakov, Deputy Chairman of Yabloko, does not deny the presence of risks associated with politicians from the list, as does not deny fear of these risks: “Stepanov’s nomination jeopardizes the entire“ Yabloko ”list. The lifting of the “Yabloko” list is the “drain” of the elections in favor of “United Russia”, because then there will be no party in this election that requires the release of political prisoners and the abolition of repressive laws, ”he explained to “ open media ”.

According to the Voice, the Bashkir social activist Albert Rakhmatullin said about pressure on the Playan party. There was also a case of pressure from the Moscow City Hall at the Communist Party of the Communist Party regarding the nomination of Vitaly Petrov, ally Valery Rashkin. There was no nomination in the Kostroma region of Valery of the Nightingale from the "Party of Growth".

*( recognized by the Moscow City Court with an extremist organization, included by the Ministry of Justice in the list of NGOs that perform the function of the "foreign agent" - ed. )