In order of accession – Newspaper Kommersant No. 53 (7498) of 03/29/2023

New subjects will be able to hold their first Russian elections according to the rules that they themselves will establish, follows from the package of amendments to the electoral legislation submitted to the State Duma on Tuesday. In addition, residents of the new territories will be able to vote not only with a passport, but also with a “other document”, the voting time may be reduced, and polling stations may appear even outside these regions. At the same time, the authors of the bill proposed to finally abandon absentee ballots, which are practically not used due to the introduction of the Mobile Voter system.

A bill to amend the basic federal law “On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights…” was submitted to the Duma by Senators Andrey Klishas and Vyacheslav Timchenko, as well as a group of deputies from the United Russia, LDPR and New People factions. A significant part of the amendments concerns elections in new regions.

Thus, these subjects are given the opportunity to determine the specifics of the conduct of elections and the implementation of certain provisions of the electoral legislation. This rule will apply only to the first elections after being admitted to the Russian Federation and is aimed at “ensuring security, protecting the life and health of citizens, exercising and protecting the electoral rights of citizens.” In this case, the Central Election Commission (CEC) will have to conduct a legal examination of the relevant regulatory act of the constituent entity of the Russian Federation.

Some features are proposed to be immediately fixed in the federal law. For example, residents of new regions will be able to use “another document” instead of a passport when voting, and the duration of voting, again for security reasons, can be reduced. Polling stations can be created, including outside these subjects, and the procedure for their formation and voting will be determined by the CEC. As Nikolai Bulaev, deputy chairman of the CEC, explained to RIA Novosti, the need for such polling stations is due to the fact that the Mobile Voter mechanism, which allows citizens to vote outside their place of residence, works on the basis of the voter register and the Gosuslugi portal, and residents of new regions do not always have full details for entering their data into electronic systems.

All of these changes are proposed to be made to Art. 81 of the Law on Guarantees, which contains its transitional provisions. A new rule will also appear there, softening the requirement that candidates must close accounts in foreign banks and renounce any foreign assets. The authors of the draft want to make an exception for those who cannot get rid of these assets due to circumstances beyond their control: in this case, the candidate must submit relevant information to the election commission and state “circumstances that prevent compliance with these requirements.” Violation of the ban in such a situation should not serve as a basis for denial of registration or exclusion of a candidate from the certified list, the bill says. At the same time, the amendments do not specify whether it is only about candidates participating in elections in the new territories.

Earlier, Kommersant reported that the CEC was preparing for elections in the new constituent entities of the Russian Federation as planned, despite the fact that martial law is still in effect there, during which elections cannot be held. In all four constituent entities, it is planned to elect deputies of regional parliaments and city dumas of administrative centers.

In addition to measures to regulate the electoral process in the annexed territories, the draft law also proposes more general changes. For example, the authors propose to exclude from the legislation all references to absentee ballots, through which citizens could vote outside their place of permanent residence. As noted in the explanatory note to the project, the development of the “Mobile voter” mechanism has led to the fact that in practice the institution of absentee ballots has become unclaimed, and the possibility of their use remains only in a small number of regions. Recall that the introduction of the Mobile Voter system in 2017 was proposed by the head of the Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova: after the presidential elections in 2018, she reported that almost 5.7 million Russians used this mechanism.

Among other novelties of the bill is the opening of extraterritorial sites in the pre-trial detention center for prisoners who are outside the boundaries of their constituency. This will give them the opportunity to participate in municipal elections, since now temporary sites in places of deprivation of liberty are created only at elections at the federal and regional levels. The bill also gives regional election commissions the right, in agreement with the CEC, to organize municipal elections in the capitals of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. At the same time, if the powers of the district commission are entrusted to the commission of the subject, then parties and public organizations will not be able to appoint their observers to this election commission.

In addition, the amendments allow the federal and regional public chambers to appoint observers for any election, and not only in those subjects where such observation is provided for by regional law. The possibility of public observation is formulated as a norm of direct action, that is, such observation at regional and local elections, if the draft is adopted, will become possible in all regions without exception. Finally, the bill obliges candidates to inform the electoral commission about the receipt of a criminal record, if this event occurred already during the election campaign.

The authorities are trying to find solutions that will allow in the current rather unpredictable situation to provide the electoral system with freedom of maneuver, political strategist Roman Smirnov believes. The proposed amendments, in his opinion, will make it possible to make decisions that, depending on the situation, can be repeatedly changed. “And we remember that in the new territories there are problems not only with security, but also with the population that is forced to migrate. We also see that the international situation is constantly changing: new sanctions are being introduced, there are new attacks on officials,” the expert notes. And the introduced bill is an attempt to remove risks in the face of uncertainty, sums up Mr. Smirnov.

Elena Rozhkova, Anastasia Kornya