Decentralization without recommendation

The Central Election Commission (CEC) of Udmurtia changed its name last week, getting rid of the first word. Ella Pamfilova, chairman of the CEC of the Russian Federation, praised her colleagues for showing initiative from below, without waiting for recommendations from above, but clarified that in nine other republics, election commissions are called “central”. The electoral legislation does not require uniformity in the names of the commissions of subjects, however, according to Ms. Pamfilova, there can be only one Central Election Commission in the country. As Kommersant found out, the Election Commission of Karelia is already in the process of renaming, this issue is being worked out in Chuvashia, but in North Ossetia and Tatarstan they will definitely not “decentralize” on their own initiative.

Ella Pamfilova raised the issue of the name of the republican commissions at a meeting of the CEC on March 29. “It is important, in general, that there should be one Central Election Commission in Russia,” said the chairman of the Central Election Commission. She specifically emphasized that in the case of Udmurtia, this was an initiative from below – without any “requests or recommendations, proposals from above.” The renaming in no way detracts from the significance and status of the election commissions, it “simply streamlines the process,” Ms. Pamfilova assured. According to her, there are still nine commissions in Russia that have retained the word “central” in their names. As Kommersant found out, these are the republican election commissions of Adygea, Bashkiria, Karelia, Mari El, Mordovia, North Ossetia, Tatarstan, Chuvashia and Yakutia.

In Udmurtia, the electoral committee received a new name on March 27 after the entry into force of the regional law “On the Electoral Commission of the Udmurt Republic.” As noted in the message on the commission’s website, this is not the first renaming of the election commission in history: in 1995 it already ceased to be “central”, but in the early 2000s it returned to its former name.

Plans to get rid of the word “central” were announced in December 2022 by the head of the electoral committee of Karelia, Alexei Bakhilin. At a meeting of the CEC of the Russian Federation, he said that the development of the relevant bill was in its final stages, and explained the decision itself by saying that “in conditions when the electoral system has been formed as a single vertical of electoral bodies, one Central Election Commission should be at the head of the system.” According to the database of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia, the relevant bill was submitted to the republican parliament in early February, but has not yet been considered.

Of the remaining eight republics, as Kommersant found out, the discussion of a possible renaming is being conducted only in the CEC of Chuvashia. “The issue of renaming the Central Election Commission of the Chuvash Republic into the Electoral Commission of the Chuvash Republic is currently being studied,” Kommersant was told at the election commission. In Bashkiria and Mordovia, this issue is not discussed, however, in the Mordovian CEC, Kommersant clarified that if the task of renaming is set “centrally from the CEC of the Russian Federation”, they will definitely fulfill it. Kommersant was told in the internal policy department of North Ossetia that there was no talk of changing the name of the republican Central Executive Committee, since they consider it inappropriate there. Kommersant was unable to get comments from the electoral commissions of Adygea, Mari El and Yakutia.

Finally, the press service of the Central Election Commission of Tatarstan told Kommersant that the name of the commission “is of a historical nature and fully complies with the requirements of federal law,” and its change will lead to a decrease in the status of the election commission among government agencies and authority in front of voters. “Any renaming is associated with the introduction of changes to a large number of legislative and by-laws, with significant material costs and information costs,” the republican CEC stressed.

Recall that until recently Tatarstan remained the last region of the Russian Federation, which did not abandon the title “president” for the highest official of the republic. The law prohibiting the names of heads of subjects as presidents was adopted back in 2010, and regional laws had to be brought into line with it before January 1, 2015. However, Tatarstan did not change its constitution, and its current leader, Rustam Minnikhanov, was re-elected president twice more. At the end of 2021, the State Duma adopted a new law on public authority in the regions, in which the ban on presidents was duplicated. Tatarstan tried to defend this name after that, but eventually made the necessary changes to the constitution.

In 2010, a law was passed that prohibited the use of the names of federal legislative bodies in the names of regional parliaments. The initiative was introduced by the Astrakhan region, where the Legislative Assembly at that time was called the State Duma (after the adoption of the law, it became simply a “thought”). The Tomsk Region also had its own State Duma, where they eventually changed their name to the “legislative Duma”.

As for the names of regional election commissions, the legislation does not oblige them to be brought to uniformity: the basic law “On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights” uses the term “Election Commission of a Subject of the Russian Federation”. The topic of renaming election commissions and the exclusion of the word “central” from their names was raised in December last year by the deputy chairman of the CEC, Nikolai Bulaev, at one of the meetings of the commission. Member of the CEC Boris Ebzeev then recalled that this issue had been “hanging” since 2011, but now it had “moved off the ground”.

Elena Rozhkova, corset “Kommersant”