The CEC explained how the inhabitants of the pre-trial detention center will be able to vote in the elections of their governors
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The Central Election Commission (CEC) on Monday approved a special procedure for voting in places of detention of suspects and defendants. The document allows citizens who are in pre-trial detention centers (SIZOs) outside their region to participate in elections. In total, there are about 300 such institutions in Russia, where on average up to 97 thousand voters can be kept. But in 2023, the experiment will take place only in Moscow and the Moscow region, and nonresident residents of local pre-trial detention centers will be able to vote only in the gubernatorial elections.
A special procedure for voting in a pre-trial detention center was adopted in pursuance of recent amendments to the electoral legislation, allowing citizens who are in a pre-trial detention center outside their constituency, that is, not at their place of residence, to participate in elections. To do this, special polling stations can be created on the territory of the isolation ward, and the CEC determines the specific details of organizing voting there.
The procedure for voting at an extraordinary meeting of the CEC on July 17 was represented by a member of the commission, Elmira Khaimurzina. According to her, the Federal Penitentiary Service actively participated in the development of the document. According to the materials prepared for the CEC meeting, there are currently 208 pre-trial detention centers and 75 “other premises” with such a regime in Russia, in which 93-97 thousand voters can be simultaneously. For example, during the elections to the State Duma in 2021, 77.7 thousand people were in pre-trial detention, and in 2022 in the regions where the elections were held – 10.2 thousand. “Pragmatists argue that this is an insignificant figure that does not affect anything – said Ms. Khaimurzina. – But at the same time, at almost every election, we have appeals, including to the Central Election Commission of Russia, that a person could not exercise his active suffrage when he was in a pre-trial detention center. CEC Chairman Ella Pamfilova confirmed that such appeals were received, and especially insistently, from the Commissioner for Human Rights in Moscow, Tatyana Potyaeva.
Recall that one of the most famous such cases occurred in the 2022 Moscow municipal elections, when opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza (included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of foreign agents), who was subsequently convicted of treason and fakes about the army, tried to vote from a pre-trial detention center in Moscow. Unlike a number of his cellmates, who ended up behind bars at their place of residence and were able to vote, the politician could not do this, because he was registered in another district of Moscow. Mr. Kara-Murza tried to defend his right to participate in the elections, but the Zamoskvoretsky court dismissed his claim, citing the fact that the electoral legislation does not provide for the possibility of organizing voting outside his constituency. Then the Ombudsman Tatyana Potyaeva asked Ella Pamfilova to settle the issues of voting in the municipal elections for the inhabitants of the pre-trial detention center, and the chairman of the CEC supported this idea. According to Ms. Pamfilova, the CEC also received an appeal from Vladimir Kara-Murza, the issue was also discussed with members of the Presidential Human Rights Council, but within the framework of the law in force at that time, the problem turned out to be unsolvable.
At yesterday’s meeting, Elmira Khaymurzina confirmed that voting in the pre-trial detention center was more or less well organized in federal elections – presidential and in a single district to the State Duma – but with lower-level campaigns, even gubernatorial ones, a problem immediately arose.
The May amendments gave the CEC the right to conduct an experimental vote this year and determine which regions and in which elections will be involved in it. As a result, the CEC decided that Moscow and the Moscow Region would take part in the experiment, and residents of the regions where governors are elected this year (in total, direct elections of heads will be held in September in 21 constituent entities of the Russian Federation) will be able to vote in their pre-trial detention centers.
In the capital, according to the Central Executive Committee, there are eight pre-trial detention centers, where there are 9.8 thousand people, and in the Moscow region – 12 pre-trial detention centers with 4.6 thousand inhabitants. According to the calculations of Ilya Berezkin, chairman of the regional electoral committee near Moscow, 2,200 of these 4,600 citizens are from other cities and have active voting rights in 19 constituent entities of the Russian Federation. Moscow did not publish such calculations at the CEC meeting, but, according to the head of the Moscow City Electoral Committee, Olga Kirillova, the members of the commission “decomposed and worked out for themselves” these data and will report on the results of their work.
According to the accepted procedure, voting in the pre-trial detention center will be held for one day, which will be determined by the management of the detention center. It also has the right to determine the time of voting. To be included in the list of voters, the suspect or the accused will have to fill out a special form, after which the data on all voters in the pre-trial detention center will be sent to a special PEC, and then to the Vybory GAS. At the same time, the use of online voting, even for those citizens in whose regions it will be available, is impossible in a pre-trial detention center, since there should not be access to the Internet, Ms. Khaimurzina specified.
This year, according to the deputy chairman of the Central Election Commission, Nikolai Bulaev, experimental voting in the pre-trial detention center will be carried out almost manually. “But by the next EDG, when the list of subjects of the Russian Federation will be expanded, it is important to automate the process of both receiving ballots and mailing protocols and voting results to the subjects,” Mr. Bulaev admonished. It should be noted that the Federal Informatization Center under the Central Election Commission has already ordered the revision of the software of the GAS “Vybory”, which will ensure the work with voters’ applications submitted at specialized polling stations, accounting for the results of the voting held there and displaying the final data. The initial price of the contract is 11.6 million rubles, applications will be accepted until July 19.
CEC rejects “speculations” about the formation of the PEC
At a meeting on July 17, CEC chairman Ella Pamfilova reported on the results of the formation of new compositions of precinct election commissions (PECs) in order to stop “all speculation” about not admitting representatives of some parties there. According to her, due to the expiration of the five-year term of office, 89.2 thousand PECs (or 95.2% of their total number) are subject to reappointment, while 81.5 thousand of them have been formed so far.
Recall that earlier the Communist Party of the Russian Federation complained that in several regions at once (in particular, in the Altai, Krasnodar and Primorsky Territories, as well as in the Amur and Omsk Regions), its candidates were not admitted en masse to the new compositions of the PEC due to “rating voting ”, although by law parliamentary parties have a guaranteed quota in election commissions at all levels. Because of this, the Primorye communists even decided to refuse to participate in the gubernatorial elections. Representatives of Yabloko referred to similar problems in the Novosibirsk and Chelyabinsk regions.
Regional electoral commissions, according to Ella Pamfilova, conducted a detailed analysis of the situation with candidates from the Communist Party and received the following result: the Communists proposed 77.4 thousand candidates for the PEC, and 72.2 thousand of them were appointed. “Only 1.9%, that is, 1,482 people, are not included in the composition of the commissions,” the head of the CEC specified. And the remaining 3,700 Communist Party candidates were enrolled in the reserve because the party proposed more than one person to one commission, Ms. Pamfilova added, emphasizing that “this is not considered ‘non-enrollment’.”
Of those who were not admitted to the new composition of the PEC, 50 people refused on their own, six people died, two were under 18 years old, 14 submitted documents after the deadline for their admission, 92 candidates had an unexpunged or outstanding conviction. 49 nominees of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation had foreign citizenship, 33 had the status of a deputy (which prevents them from being appointed to the election commission), and 256 people submitted an incomplete package of documents. However, most of all – 980 people – were not included in the PEC precisely according to the results of the rating voting. It, as Ella Pamfilova explained, was carried out in cases where the number of candidates nominated by parties exceeded the allowable number of PEC members. “The law does not indicate that of those who have preferences, someone has priority,” the head of the CEC stressed. Therefore, according to her, according to the results of the rating voting, the commissions selected those who are the most efficient and efficient.
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