Dear President – Newspaper Kommersant No. 187 (7388) dated 10/10/2022
[ad_1]
It is planned to allocate 33 billion rubles for the presidential elections in 2024, taking into account the potential second round. This follows from the draft budget for 2023 submitted by the government to the State Duma. It was planned to spend this amount on the presidential campaign last year, simultaneously with the introduction of the institution of multi-day voting in the electoral legislation. Experts believe that the decision to use it in the upcoming federal campaign has actually been made.
For the upcoming presidential elections in 2024, 33.2 billion rubles have been reserved in the 2023 budget. For comparison: the 2018 presidential campaign cost the state 24.1 billion rubles, and the 2012 elections cost 10.4 billion rubles. The budget for the organization of the presidential campaign is traditionally laid down for the year preceding the year of voting, and extended to the next. As Ella Pamfilova, chairman of the Central Election Commission, explained earlier, voting for the head of state takes place in March, but the election campaign starts in early December, and within ten days from the announcement of the election, all money for the first round should be transferred to the regions.
Planned expenses for the organization of the presidential elections were increased last year. If in the budget for 2021 and the planning period of 2022 and 2023 only 19.8 billion rubles were reserved for these purposes, then in the fall of 2021 their cost increased to 33.2 billion. At about the same time, a rule appeared in the electoral legislation , allowing the Central Election Commission to make a decision on holding a vote within a few (but not more than three) days. According to the law, the commission must decide on this issue within ten days from the date of the official publication of the decision to call the elections.
Experts note that the format of multi-day elections can just explain such an increase in the cost of organizing voting. The remuneration of employees of election commissions makes up the lion’s share of all expenses, reminds the head of the central executive committee of the New People party and the former chairman of the Yaroslavl regional election commission, Oleg Zakharov. Members of precinct commissions receive hourly wages, and their work on Friday and Saturday is a large amount, quite comparable to the announced increase in costs, the expert believes. At the same time, expenses do not grow linearly, since commissions are not on full duty on Friday and Saturday. Plus, one should take into account the indexation of the payments themselves in connection with inflation, adds Mr. Zakharov.
The authors of the current draft budget also propose to increase by 2.6 billion rubles. funding for digital services provided for participants in the electoral process in 2023 as part of the national program “Digital Economy”. In the explanatory note, this decision is explained by the “redistribution of budget allocations from other activities.” Recall that it was within the framework of this program that digital services have been implemented in recent years, such as “mobile voter” and remote electronic voting.
Member of the Central Election Commission Yevgeny Kolyushin believes that in fact the decision on multi-day voting in the 2024 presidential election has already been made, although, of course, it has yet to be formalized legally. It should be noted that experts have repeatedly said that multi-day voting reduces the possibilities of public control over the procedure for expressing will. At the same time, according to an October 2020 VTsIOM survey, 61% of Russians found this form more convenient.
It should be noted that the 2021 State Duma elections – and this was the first federal campaign where voting took place over several days – also turned out to be more expensive than all previous ones. 21.4 billion rubles were allocated for them, and 18.4 billion were spent. For comparison: 10.3 billion rubles were spent on the 2016 parliamentary campaign, and only 7 billion rubles were spent on the elections of State Duma deputies in 2011.
[ad_2]
Source link