Communists doubled by half – Newspaper Kommersant No. 145 (7346) of 08/11/2022

In Omsk on Wednesday completed the registration of candidates for deputies of the city council. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is talking about a large-scale campaign organized by political strategists of competitors: in half of the 40 single-mandate constituencies, Communist Party candidates are opposed by rivals with the same or similar names. Due to such “twins” in last year’s elections to the legislative assembly of the Omsk region, the communists, according to their calculations, fell short of four mandates. Competitors of the Communist Party reject accusations of “spoilerism”.

As it turned out on the basis of the registration of candidates for the Omsk City Council, in nine out of 40 single-mandate constituencies, namesakes will compete with each other. For example, Vitaly and Ivan Fedin are registered in constituency No. 2, Nelli and Elena Vorobyovs are registered in constituency No. 10, two Alexandrov Kraevs are among the candidates in constituency No. 8, and three Zhukovs are in constituency No. 25.

Candidates with similar names will compete in 11 more districts. So, in the 4th district, the rivals were Alexander Svetetsky and Stanislav Svintitsky, in the 5th – Sergey Skripal and Anatoly Skripkarev, in the 6th – Natalya Donskikh and Lyudmila Dontsova, in the 15th – Evgeny Nemtsev and Sergey Nemtsov, in 17 -m – Sergey Abdulin and Mukhamed Abduvalinov. And in constituency No. 14, Omsk residents will have to choose between two Gavrilenkos and two Gavrilovs.

In all cases, candidates from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation faced “doubles”. “We were the first to nominate candidates and a list for certification, we were the first to register,” Andrei Alekhin, first secretary of the regional party committee, State Duma deputy, reminded Kommersant. In his opinion, there are two main political forces in the Omsk region – the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and “the authorities that are fighting the communists, who are very popular in the region.” In the elections to the State Duma-2021, according to the party lists, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation received 31.2% of the vote in the Omsk region, losing only to the United Russia (32.9%), and won two of the three single-mandate constituencies. In the simultaneous elections to the regional legislature, the communists also came second in the party vote with a score of 23.7% (against 31.3% for United Russia).

According to Mr. Alekhine, in last year’s elections to the Legislative Assembly, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation lost four mandates due to “twins”, but the possibilities of combating this technology are limited: “Here is only explanatory work (among voters.— “b”), in another way to influence them (“twins”.— “b”) useless”. The Communists elected to the State Duma from the Omsk region have already informed the Central Election Commission about the current situation. And the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennady Zyuganov, published an appeal to Omsk residents on the website of the regional branch of the party, in which he stated that “the Omsk elections were the only ones in the country where the ruling party went on such an unprecedented scale to directly deceive the voters.”

In three districts, namesakes of candidates from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation are nominees of the “Communists of Russia”. But the head of the Omsk regional committee of this party, Vladimir Kazanin, does not consider his associates to be spoilers: “Spoilers are unknown people who are led to the polls by the hand. But how can our current deputy Vladimir Zhukov, who is actively working in the City Council, be a spoiler? In other constituencies, according to him, “it happens that the (surnames of candidates.— “b”), but there are normal activists there, they live and act there – they can also win.” Vladimir Zhukov himself agrees with this: “One of the three Zhukovs in district No. 25 is me, a deputy of the City Council, the second is also a deputy of the City Council from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the third is a candidate from the LDPR who lives in this district. I also jokingly asked the representative of the Liberal Democratic Party: did you put a spoiler for me?

In two districts, the names of candidates from the Communist Party and SRZP coincide. In the Omsk branch of the SRZP, they did not answer Kommersant’s questions. Most of the other “twins” are self-nominated.

“The legislation does not contain a ban on the nomination of citizens with the same last name, first name and patronymic in the same elections. All procedures for nominating candidates for the elections of deputies of the Omsk City Council of the 7th convocation were carried out in full accordance with the norms of the current legislation. In addition, according to the information received, among candidates with similar surnames, there are no facts of changing the surname, name or patronymic during the election campaign or within a year before the official publication of the decision to call the elections, ”Ivan Khodakov, deputy chairman of the Omsk Regional Electoral Committee, explained to Kommersant. He also noted that among the candidates with similar names there are acting deputies of the City Council.

Inna Vetrenko, head of the Department of Social Technologies at the North-Western Institute of Management of the RANEPA, agrees that the appearance of “twins” in some cases may be the result of the activities of political strategists, and not just a coincidence. Moreover, such a method of contesting elections, which allows dispersing the votes of candidates, has been used in Omsk for a long time, the expert adds: “The technology is old and understandable, sometimes it leads to disastrous results for candidates.”

Valery Lavsky, Novosibirsk