Refusal distribution – Newspaper Kommersant No. 146 (7347) dated 08/12/2022

The Expert Institute for Social Research (EISI) discussed on Thursday the results of the registration of candidates for the September elections in the regions. The round table participants came to the conclusion that, despite the “special operation factor”, the campaign is running normally, the level of competition at all levels is high, and the number of refusals to register has decreased compared to previous campaigns. An outside expert believes that the decrease in the number of failures is due to a change in the calculation methodology.

The report on the results of registration for the autumn elections, which was discussed at the EISI round table, was prepared by the Democracy Research Foundation. Its head, the head of the coordinating council of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation for public control over voting, Maxim Grigoriev, first of all noted that, despite “serious geopolitical challenges”, the election campaign is proceeding normally and demonstrates a high level of competition in the elections of governors and a decrease in the number of refusals to register candidates .

As Kommersant previously reported, in direct gubernatorial elections in 14 regions, the so-called municipal filter was able to overcome 77 out of 88 nominees, that is, 87.5% of all participants – this is a record since the restoration of direct gubernatorial elections in 2012 and the introduction of the filter itself . Of the parliamentary parties, only the LDPR and the New People in Karelia failed to register their candidates. At the same time, in five subjects at once, everyone was admitted to the elections.

“A high level of party-political competition” persists in the elections of regional legislative bodies, the report says. 40 out of 42 party lists and about 98% of the candidates nominated in single-mandate constituencies passed the registration stage. According to the authors of the study, compared with 2017, when the previous elections were held in the same regions, the number of refusals was reduced by four times. In total, 14 parties participate in the main and additional elections of regional parliaments, 10 of which were able to register lists of candidates, and another 4 nominated their representatives exclusively in single-mandate constituencies.

Sakhalin, where nine parties participate in elections to the regional Duma, political scientist Pavel Danilin called “a hotbed of democracy.” He also cited statistics on the number of refusals to register candidates from parliamentary parties: in United Russia, one “listed person” was not allowed to run in the elections, in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation – three candidates on the lists and one in the district, in the Liberal Democratic Party – two on the lists, in the “Fair Russia – For the Truth” – six on the lists and two on the districts, in the “New People” – one candidate each on the list and one district. “Just as with senior officials, in the elections to legislative assemblies, the dropout was primarily due not to the arbitrariness of election commissions, as some oppositionists like to say here, but to the fact that the parties could not or did not want to collect signatures, that is, voluntarily refused to participate,” Mr. Danilin assured.

“The overall level of competitiveness of candidates in the municipal elections can also be assessed as high, primarily in the administrative centers of the constituent entities of Russia, where all 15 political parties that nominated candidates will continue to participate in the elections,” the report says. At the same time, more than 93% of candidates have already been registered in single-mandate constituencies in elections to the city dumas of regional capitals.

Separately, the participants of the round table focused on the municipal elections in Moscow. According to political scientist Alexander Asafov, at the start of the campaign there were expectations that the government would create conditions that would make it difficult for the opposition to “get to the candidates”. But the example of Moscow shows that these expectations were wrong, the expert is sure. As evidence, he cited almost final data from the Moscow City Election Commission: 6,259 candidates out of 7,326 nominated were registered, while 599 people withdrew their candidacies or did not bring documents, and only 465 were refused for various reasons – as a rule, these are errors in documents or hiding a criminal record. That is, the failure rate was 6.35%, and this is lower than in 2017, summed up Mr. Asafov.

Political scientist Alexander Kynev, who did not participate in the round table, draws attention to the fact that this year the method of counting the number of candidates who were denied registration has changed: earlier they included those who did not submit documents, but now they are considered as dropped out. According to the expert, if we count in the old way, then the number of refusals, in particular, in the gubernatorial elections will be approximately the same as in previous years. As for the legislative elections, there were fewer candidates at the stage of nomination this year than in the same regions in the previous elections five years ago, the expert adds.

Afanasy Sborov