In most Russian regions, the September voting will be three days

Last week, the parliaments of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation launched a regional election campaign. Now the electoral commissions must decide on the terms of the expression of will – according to the law, a single voting day (UDG) can stretch up to three days. Despite the protests of part of the opposition, in most regions, officials plan to keep the “coronavirus” three-day period. However, there will be exceptions: for example, the organizers of elections in the Tyumen region, Crimea and Bashkiria are ready to meet on one day.

The capital was the first to determine the duration of the expression of will. On June 7, the Moscow City Duma scheduled the mayoral election for September 10, and the very next day, the Moscow City Electoral Committee decided to hold a vote for three days – from September 8 to 10. As Olga Kirillova, chairman of the commission, explained, voters “liked” the practice of multi-day voting, which was born during the coronavirus pandemic, so it was decided to leave it. “The number of people who (formerly.— “b”) were able to take part in the elections, thus increasing,” she stressed.

Recall that for the first time the multi-day period was used at the height of the pandemic – at the vote on amendments to the Constitution in the summer of 2020. Then the will lasted for seven days, which was explained by security considerations. After that, amendments were made to the electoral legislation, according to which voting can be held for several days in a row, but not more than three. In 2020–2021, all elections, by decision of the Central Election Commission (CEC), were three days. When the epidemiological situation stabilized, the CEC gave this issue to the discretion of the lower commissions, which should be determined within ten days from the date of the election. In 2022, most campaigns are expected to last three days, although there have been exceptions. For example, in the elections of the heads of Buryatia and the Sverdlovsk region, the regional commissions considered it possible to return to a one-day election.

In addition to Moscow, a decision was made on the duration of the expression of will last week in three more subjects. In Khakassia, where the head of the republic and deputies of the Supreme Council will be elected, as well as in the Ulyanovsk region, where parliamentary elections will be held, they settled on a three-day meeting. As Yury Andriyenko, head of the Ulyanovsk Regional Electoral Committee, explained to Kommersant, the commission decided to keep the maximum possible number of days in order to avoid confusion in parallel municipal elections: according to regional law, in the case of a one-day vote, a ten-day “early delay” must be introduced there.

In the Omsk region, where the governor will be elected, they stopped for two days. “This was done for the convenience of voters,” Ivan Khodakov, head of the regional election commission, told Kommersant, “since early voting is not provided for in these elections, and multi-day voting will enable Omsk residents to vote on one of the convenient days.” According to him, the commission considered the three-day period to be inappropriate, since it “would complicate the educational process in educational institutions” where the polling stations are located.

All other election commissions must decide on the timing of voting before the end of this week, and in most regions they are inclined to multi-day elections. According to informed sources of Kommersant, they plan to vote for three days in the Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod and Orel regions (gubernatorial elections will be held there), Kalmykia, Yaroslavl and Rostov regions (parliamentary), as well as in Yekaterinburg (elections to the City Duma).

Tatyana Gladkikh, the chairperson of the electoral committee of Primorsky Territory (gubernatorial elections will be held there), suggested “not getting ahead of ourselves,” but admitted to Kommersant that she supported the three-day voting as well-established. A similar opinion is shared by the head of the Novosibirsk electoral committee, Olga Blago (they will also elect a governor). “Three-day voting is primarily in the interests of voters: they have the opportunity to choose a day convenient for themselves,” she told Kommersant.

According to the “usual scenario”, the EDG will be held in Yakutia, where they will simultaneously elect the head of the republic, deputies of the parliament and the city duma of Yakutsk, Yevgeny Fedorov, head of the regional election committee, told Kommersant. He declined to specify the specific number of days, but all recent Yakut elections, including the mayor of Yakutsk in 2021, were three days long. But voting for the mayor of Khabarovsk, most likely, will be two days, Kommersant’s sources in the regional election committee say: last year’s experience of by-elections to the legislature, which also lasted two days, “did not cause serious negative assessments,” they note.

However, as in the past year, some regions have decided to return to one-day. For example, the election of the head of the Tyumen region will be held in the old fashioned way, Kommersant was told at the regional election commission. Also, most likely, voting in the by-elections to the State Duma in the Simferopol district will be one-day, a source in the Crimean election commission told Kommersant. According to him, this is due to the unwillingness to “arrange multi-day meetings of citizens” and the general strengthening of security measures on the peninsula. Finally, the electoral committee of Bashkiria, where the parliament will be elected, is also “leaning towards one voting day,” a source in the commission told Kommersant.

It should be noted that this year the opposition is much more active against the multi-day meeting than in the past. So, in Khakassia, Buryatia, Irkutsk, Ulyanovsk, Rostov and Novosibirsk regions, deputies from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Liberal Democratic Party proposed limiting voting to one day, referring to the end of the pandemic, the need for savings and increased security in the conditions of the NWO. However, none of them have been successful so far.

Andrey Ashes; corset “b”