Acceptance of documents from self-nominated presidential candidates has been completed

The Central Election Commission (CEC) on Wednesday completed accepting applications from initiative groups created in support of self-nominated candidates in the presidential elections of the Russian Federation. Of the 25 citizens who notified the CEC of their intention to run without party support, only six reached the commission within the prescribed period, and not even all of them showed up with a full package of documents. The biggest obstacle for candidates at this stage turned out to be notaries: it turned out that they work for a long time, and sometimes refuse to work at all.

In total, as Deputy Chairman of the Central Election Commission Nikolai Bulaev said the day before, 33 people declared their desire to participate in the 2024 presidential elections. With eight candidates, nominated parties, it turned out that there should have been 25 initiative groups in support of self-nominated candidates. However, only six people reached the Central Election Commission, and four of them delayed submitting documents until almost the last moment permitted by law – 18:00 on December 27. Earlier, we recall that the commission had already made one decision to refuse registration of the initiative group and registered a group that supported self-nomination current President Vladimir Putin.

The last one to cross the threshold of the Central Election Commission building, two minutes before the deadline, was a trade union activist Alexandra Tishchenko (she ran for mayor of Moscow in the 2023 elections, but did not submit documents to the city election commission). Her team members were breathing heavily and complaining about traffic jams: they had to give up their personal transport and travel by public transport.

However, many potential candidates did not reach the CEC at all.

Thus, the initiative group for the nomination of a former FSB officer, ex-Minister of Defense of the DPR, was unable to submit the documents necessary for registration Igor Girkin (Strelkov). The reason was the absence of the signature of the nominee himself in the documents, who is currently under arrest in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center on charges of incitement to extremism and has not received permission to meet with a notary.

“Musician, inventor and captain of small boats” also did not reach the Central Election Commission Alexander Suslov. According to his headquarters, the invited notary failed to certify the data of 500 group members: he spent several hours on the first hundred, after which it was decided not to continue. The problem is that the notary cannot simply use the list of participants by checking their passports: the notary or his assistants must personally enter all their data into a special notary database.

At the head of the public organization “Army of Fatherland Defenders” Ivan Otrakovsky He also had difficulties with notarization of documents (about 20 notaries refused to work with him), and at the last moment he was refused to rent premises. As a result, Mr. Otrakovsky brought a protocol that was not notarized to the Central Election Commission and stated that the existing procedure for nomination for president makes the expression of the will of the people dependent on a notary or landlord. A member of the Central Election Commission, Anton Lopatin, who accepted the documents from Ivan Otrakovsky, noticed that he did not present other important documents – for example, certificates of expenses and foreign real estate, which are easy to prepare without the participation of a notary.

Beauty blogger from Yekaterinburg Russian Rada, who also submitted documents to the CEC on Wednesday, said that she had no problems with notarizing the data of group members because she had held a training meeting a few days before. This procedure does take several hours, but “we fed everyone well, so no one left,” the candidate explained.

In turn, the environmental blogger Anatoly Batashev admitted that he had usefully spent the hours that the notary and about three dozen of his assistants spent on legal formalities during the meeting of the initiative group. “I managed to talk in detail with the audience,” the candidate rejoiced. He remembered that this was already his “second run” in the presidential election: the first time he was going to run for the 2018 elections, but then the Kuchino landfill in Balashikha, near Moscow, which he fought against, was closed, and there was no motivation.

This time, the environmentalist said, he is not going to the polls to protest: he has an “excellent program for developing the country,” but if the Central Election Commission denies him registration, he will treat this “with great respect” – after all, after every election life in the country is changing for the better, the blogger reasoned.

Now the Central Election Commission will have five days to study the documents of each initiative group and register it or refuse registration. If the CEC makes a positive decision, self-nominated candidates will be able to begin collecting 300 thousand voter signatures in their support. Reception of documents from candidates nominated by parties will continue until 18:00 on January 1.

Anastasia Kornya