Sergei Sobyanin won the Moscow mayoral election by a large margin
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Following the results of the elections that ended on Sunday, the current mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, was re-elected for a new term, having, according to preliminary data, received more than 75% of the votes. The three-day voting in the capital was calmer than usual, and the overwhelming majority of voters chose to use the electronic format of expressing their will. The candidates and their headquarters did not notice any serious violations and noted the routine nature of the completed campaign.
Muscovites’ penchant for remote electronic voting (DEV) was clearly evident by Saturday evening, when the number of citizens who voted in this way exceeded 2 million people. In total, more than 2.7 million metropolitan voters (more than 80% of those who took part in the elections) chose online voting against 570 thousand who used paper ballots. As a result, the current mayor Sergei Sobyanin confidently won the “electronic competition”, receiving more than 77% of the votes. The next places were taken by Leonid Zyuganov (Communist Party of the Russian Federation, 8%), Boris Chernyshov (LDPR, 6%), Vladislav Davankov (New People, 5.1%) and Dmitry Gusev (SRZP, 3.9%). After counting the first paper ballots (3.5% of protocols), the mayor’s result was almost the same – 77.9%.
The departure of the majority of voters to the Internet has greatly changed the usual picture in the polling stations, which looked rather empty over the weekend. And almost everyone who did come there had a special reason for this.
“I just wanted to see how everything is here, this is my first time voting,” said a young resident of Kuntsevo, Leonid. “Disappointed? Not really, although I really didn’t have to go myself.”
Politically savvy Muscovite Sergei had an argument with a peer, and apparently encouraged his comrade to go on a Sunday outing: “I have a friend who knows about crypto and can explain blockchain, but even he couldn’t explain properly whether this system can be trusted.”
The Kuntsevo youth kept their political preferences to themselves, unlike pensioner Elena Vladimirovna, who decided to personally support the current mayor. “In the State Duma elections, I vote for the communists,” she reported. “In the presidential elections, for Vladimir Vladimirovich, here, for Sobyanin.” The pensioner did not require a paper ballot, since she did not notice “any difference at all” between the forms, and voted through the electronic voting terminal (TEG) installed at the polling station.
Contrary to the course towards digitalization and popularization of the DEG, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin and the leaders of all Duma factions voted at the polling stations. The inhabitants of the center, who came across to a Kommersant correspondent on Sunday, also turned out to be staunch traditionalists. A resident of the Tverskoy district, Vyacheslav, motivated the in-person attendance by distrust of the new format. His doubts were shared by his neighbor in the district, Marina: “Until my right to vote with paper is taken away, I will vote with paper,” she said as she walked. “My candidate? Why do you need this? In general, with rare exceptions, it was mainly the mayor’s supporters who shared their choice openly. “I voted for Zyuganov – personally, through a ballot, as in the newspaper (apparently, we are talking about the party Pravda.— “Kommersant”) and recommended,” admitted Muscovite Fedor.
Leonid Zyuganov set an example. His noisy appearance in the company of supporters at the polling station in the Cherry Orchard Theater plunged the system into a stupor: they could not issue a ballot to the candidate for a good five minutes. The delay, however, did not bother the politician: “You always want to criticize on election day, and usually there are a lot of violations, but I have to admit that the elections are taking place with a minimum number of violations.”
However, a member of his staff, Sergei Udaltsov, had a slight argument with the candidate. In his opinion, this year the Moscow authorities did everything to make the campaign “not particularly competitive, not particularly noticeable.”
The measured pace of voting was also noted by LDPR candidate Boris Chernyshov: “So far, everything is going smoothly, Muscovites are voting quite actively.” He said that information about significant violations, except for the case on Sokolina Gora, where observers recorded the substitution of ballots in safe packages, was not received by the party headquarters. “As far as I can tell from my fellow party members, the DEG is popular among Muscovites this year,” the liberal democrat added. “Many supporters of the Liberal Democratic Party share that they voted online.” The popularity and beneficial impact of the new format was also noted by candidate Dmitry Gusev (A Just Russia – For Truth): “We notice that there are significantly fewer violations, this is due to electronic voting.” At the same time, the Spravorossian boasted that his campaign was already giving preliminary results (the Moscow authorities had begun to deal with the problems noticed by the Socialist-Revolutionaries), and said that in recent days his headquarters had thrown all its efforts into bringing supporters to the polling stations: “Those who applied to the centers for the protection of the rights of citizens, to deputy receptions, came to meetings, went to our events. We put all our efforts into this.”
The connection with supporters was also emphasized by “New People”. Volunteers in the headquarters of their candidate Vladislav Davankov “hung” on the phones and promised not to disperse until the summing up. “They call observers to understand what the situation is and receive calls from supporters,” Anna Drobot, the head of the Moscow cell, explained to Kommersant. “Many, faced with a TEG, are interested in how to vote correctly.” Violations of the party members, according to Ms. Drobot, were recorded in the first days, “when members of the commissions did not offer to vote by paper version”: “We made a remark, people corrected themselves and began to offer both options.”
Traditionally, on election days, the Public Election Observation Headquarters worked in Moscow, which this year was located in the Red Rose business center. A video surveillance center for voting at polling stations and about 100 printers that printed the “paper trail” of the DEG were also located here.
The head of the headquarters, Vadim Kovalev, told Kommersant that over the three days of voting, the headquarters received about 250 “signals”. “Signals are either we ourselves saw some situations on CCTV cameras from the sites that require verification, or we saw messages on social networks,” Mr. Kovalev explained. He clarified that three serious cases were recorded at the headquarters, which led to the sealing of ballot boxes and further proceedings with the participation of the Moscow City Electoral Commission (MGIK). The grossest violation, according to him, occurred on September 9 at polling station No. 1246 in the Sokolinaya Gora area, where the head of the commission opened a safe package with paper ballots early in the morning. The video was published in his Telegram channel by State Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Sergei Obukhov, the headquarters sent a mobile group to the station to clarify the circumstances. As a result, the IPCC decided to cancel all paper ballots at this polling station for September 8, and the head of the PEC was suspended from work.
At another polling station in the center of Moscow, an observer noticed how a voter received one ballot, but threw two into the ballot box, Vadim Kovalev said. This ballot box was also sealed until all the circumstances were clarified. A similar situation occurred at one of the sites on Vernadsky Avenue.
“A girl came into the booth, took a selfie and then dropped clearly more than one sheet of paper into the voting box. This box was immediately removed and sealed until the circumstances were clarified what kind of sheets it got into, ”said the head of the public headquarters.
In addition, there were reports on social networks that Muscovites could not receive a paper ballot at their polling station, although this option, despite the DEG and TEG, remained available to everyone. Vadim Kovalev, however, said that the headquarters had not received any complaints about the non-issuance of a paper ballot. “This would be a serious violation, and we and the IPCC would immediately respond to this,” he assured. “There were situations when a person voted through the TEG, but then realized that this did not provide for a paper ballot, that is, he did not fully understand the process ” Mr. Kovalev explained the cases when townspeople complained that they were too intrusively asked to vote through TEGs by the excessive activity of the commission members themselves. “The technology is new, but I am sure that it is the future. Now they were testing it; one of the commission members, on their own initiative, could be so active in order to interest voters,” the head of the headquarters suggested.
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