The Central Election Commission found violations in the documents of two presidential candidates

The final number of registered presidential candidates will apparently remain unchanged compared to the end of January. On Monday, the leader of the Communists of Russia, Sergei Malinkovich, and the nominee of the Civil Initiative party, Boris Nadezhdin, received protocols for verifying the signatures they collected, and in both cases it turned out that the percentage of marriages exceeded the legal threshold of 5%. But if the communist does not intend to argue with the Central Election Commission (CEC) so as not to “disturb stability,” then Mr. Nadezhdin is ready to defend his case in the Supreme Court, and his headquarters assures that the commission itself made many mistakes when checking autographs.

On February 5, the Central Election Commission (CEC) handed over to representatives of presidential candidates the final protocols for verifying signatures collected in support of the Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communists of Russia party, Sergei Malinkovich, and ex-State Duma deputy Boris Nadezhdin, nominated by the Civil Initiative party. In both cases, the results of the verification of campaign participants were not encouraging.

Mr. Malinkovich told Kommersant that the Central Election Commission working group identified 14.9% of defects in his signature sheets: out of 60 thousand verified autographs, 8979 were found unreliable or invalid.

According to the leader of the Communists of Russia, he and his supporters will not challenge the expected decision of the Central Election Commission to refuse registration: “Not because they agree with it, but because now is the period of the Central Military District, and we do not want to disturb the stability in society.”

Boris Nadezhdin, as Kommersant was told at his headquarters, had 9,209 signatures declared invalid, that is, more than 15% of the 60 thousand selected for verification. This also implies a refusal of registration, since according to the law the number of unreliable and invalid signatures identified during a random check voters cannot account for more than 5% of their total number. The candidate himself said in his Telegram channel that he plans to “beat off” the submitted autographs, that is, he intends to prove their authenticity.

“We only need to repeal approximately 4,500 signatures out of 9,209 declared invalid,” Mr. Nadezhdin calculated.

As follows from the final verification protocol, almost half of the signatures for Boris Nadezhdin (4442) were rejected based on the conclusions of a graphologist: it is stated that the name or date was not entered by voters in their own handwriting. Also, the CEC working group had many complaints against the collectors themselves: their data is either not notarized, or incomplete, or the collector is even a member of the election commission, which is prohibited by law (they collected 360 autographs). Another 858 signatures were rejected by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, qualifying information about voters as unreliable. “Such wording may imply an error in the address, and that the passport, the details of which are indicated in the signature, is declared invalid. But in our case we have to talk about a large number of errors and typos that the CEC itself made when forming a request to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. For example, there are cities “Rostov at home” and the city “Salihard” is repeated several times – it is clear that the Ministry of Internal Affairs classifies such an address as unreliable. But it is impossible to talk about the existence of “dead souls” among the signatories,” Kommersant’s interlocutor at Mr. Nadezhdin’s headquarters is sure. According to him, they are now preparing their objections to the results of the audit, and the CEC working group will have to discuss them before the meeting on February 7.

Let us recall that last week the deputy chairman of the commission, Nikolai Bulaev, said that there were errors in the signatures submitted by candidates Malinkovich and Nadezhdin that were surprising. “When there is some inaccuracy in the spelling, the Central Election Commission, at the proposal of the working group, as a rule, does not take it into account, does not count it, but considers that this is acceptable. But when we see dozens and more than a dozen people who are no longer in this world, and they gave a signature, the question arises about the integrity of the ethical standards that are used, including by signature collectors. To some extent, the candidate is directly involved in this,” said Mr. Bulaev, without, however, specifying which candidate he was talking about.

According to Sergei Malinkovich, there are no signatures of “dead souls” in his signature sheets. “Our signatures were collected honestly,” the communist insists, although he does not rule out that formal errors were made.

According to the inspection protocol, which Kommersant was able to review, most of the signatures for the leader of the Communists of Russia were also rejected by graphologists.

More than 2 thousand autographs were found to have been collected in violation (at the workplace, in places where benefits and wages are issued, as well as with the participation of government agencies or the provision of charitable assistance). Voter information was incorrect in 583 cases.

The final decision on the registration of candidates Malinkovych and Nadezhdin should be made by the Central Election Commission at a meeting on Wednesday. Boris Nadezhdin has already stated that if he is denied access to the elections, he will appeal this decision to the Supreme Court.

Anastasia Kornya