Russia’s Supreme Court rejects Boris Nadezhdin’s final appeal against ballot rejection

The Russian Supreme Court has rejected the third and final appeal by presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin against the decision of the Central Election Commission (CEC) not to register his candidacy in March’s presidential election.

On 8 February, the CEC refused to register Nadezhdin as an official candidate in the upcoming election after 9,147 of the 105,000 signatures submitted in support of his campaign were found to have various deficiencies, a higher amount than permitted.

Nadezhdin announced the court ruling on Wednesday evening, adding that a CEC representative had questioned the extent of Nadezhdin’s public support during the hearing, claiming that “only 0.18% of citizens” had expressed their support for his candidacy.

“So this is how they explain the rejection of my candidacy to the 200,000 people who left their signatures in my support?” Nadezhdin wrote.

The Supreme Court had already rejected two other appeals lodged by the Nadezhdin campaign on separate grounds.