The Central Election Commission has formed the final list of presidential candidates

The Central Election Commission (CEC) on Thursday refused to register four nominated candidates for the post of President of Russia. Thus, there will be four candidates on the ballot during the March 15–17 vote, CEC Chairman Ella Pamfilova summed up the results of the second (after the nomination of candidates) stage of the presidential campaign. Now a former candidate from the Civil Initiative party, Boris Nadezhdin, promised to challenge the refusal in the Supreme Court, and the procedure for collecting signatures in the Constitutional Court. The remaining contenders, on the contrary, praised the electoral legislation and promised to find new ways to “be truly friends with the state.”

According to Ella Pamfilova, 114 Russian and 80 foreign media outlets were accredited for the decisive meeting of the Central Election Commission on February 8. At least two buses with Russian Guard soldiers parked at the approaches to the commission building, and the broadcast on the Central Election Commission website was intermittent due to the influx of spectators.

The leader of the “Communists of Russia” Sergei Malinkovich and the candidate from the “Civil Initiative” Boris Nadezhdin a few days ago were handed protocols with the results of checking the signatures collected in their support. These protocols were not encouraging: the number of defects in the signatures submitted by applicants greatly exceeded the permissible limit. Self-nominees Anatoly Batashev and the Russian Rada were also notified in advance by the CEC of fatal deficiencies in the documents they submitted.

But if candidate Malinkovich came to terms with this fact, declaring that resistance was “unconstructive,” then Mr. Nadezhdin fought to the last – namely, by his own admission, until five in the morning on February 8, when his headquarters sent 48 sheets of objections to the CEC. However, this could no longer affect anything. The candidate managed to get only 62 autographs at the working group. As a result, the CEC invalidated 9,147 signatures for Boris Nadezhdin, or more than 15% of the total sample. At the same time, 3,724 autographs were rejected due to the insufficient work of the candidate’s headquarters in preparing the documents, stressed Central Election Commission member Yuri Shutov. Including 1,767 signatures – due to the fact that the collectors were not included in the notarized list of persons who collected signatures. Another 360 signatures were declared invalid because they were collected by members of election commissions, which is also a violation of the law, and 81 voters signed an autograph more than once. The collectors themselves made a lot of mistakes when preparing signature sheets, noted Mr. Shutov, which is why 585 signatures were declared invalid. Finally, 11 signatories have already passed away, a member of the Central Election Commission added, and 4,064 signatures were rejected by handwriting experts.

Boris Nadezhdin asked the CEC to postpone consideration of the issue and still get acquainted with his objections. “It’s not just me standing here. Behind me are hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens who left signatures for me,” he explained. According to him, millions of voters are ready to vote for him: “And you’re telling me about 11 dead and incorrect passports.” I understand perfectly well that the problem is in the law itself… We, of course, will challenge this law!”

A separate intrigue occurred with the disappearance of notarized data of collectors in the Moscow region (including Boris Nadezhdin himself). The folder with their list existed, the candidate argued, but was lost somewhere on the way to the Central Election Commission, surviving only in a machine-readable version. “It’s just some kind of mysticism,” Mr. Nadezhdin threw up his hands. Perhaps the goal was his autograph, which would later turn up somewhere at Sotheby’s, he suggested without false modesty.

After this, members of the Central Election Commission were invited to ask Mr. Nadezhdin questions. “Dear Boris Borisovich! Or, using your discourse, dear Boris Borisovich! – Nikolai Levichev began. “102 million!” – Mr. Nadezhdin immediately responded, referring to the size of his election fund. But Mr. Levichev was difficult to confuse: he wanted to know why, being a deputy of the Dolgoprudny city council from the A Just Russia party, Boris Nadezhdin does not share her attitude towards the presidential elections (NWRP supported the nomination of Vladimir Putin) and whether he considers it “politically correct and acceptable » to be nominated from another party. “You can also remember that in 1987 I was a candidate member of the CPSU,” Nadezhdin, still a candidate, snorted. And he added that he was elected to the city council not by the party list, but by a single-mandate constituency, and was nominated by the Socialist Revolutionaries out of old friendship with their leader Sergei Mironov, so as not to collect signatures.

“I read what is written in black and white today,” Nikolai Levichev, who represents A Just Russia in the Central Election Commission, did not hide his resentment for the party. “A lot of evil must be weighing on a tired conscience. And the bloody boys…” Mr. Nadezhdin suddenly began speaking in poetry, but Ella Pamfilova could no longer stand it. “Are there any complaints about the work of the Central Election Commission regarding working with you? If there are any, please express them!” she demanded. Absolutely no complaints, Boris Nadezhdin reassured her, only wishes – to receive an answer to the objections presented, “a certificate from the working group.” With the help of this “reference”, the politician intends to appeal the refusal to register in the Supreme Court. But there is an even higher court – the Constitutional Court, he recalled. After all, instead of questions to the Central Election Commission, there are complaints to legislators, who, according to Mr. Nadezhdin, turned the collection of signatures into an impossible procedure, as well as “to the very genre of collecting signatures.”

Meanwhile, the Central Election Commission also drew conclusions based on the results of this campaign, admitted the chairman of the commission. According to her, there are at least three aspects that after the elections the CEC will propose to the legislator to reconsider. We are talking about introducing the collection of signatures through “Gosuslugi” in federal elections, as has already been done at the regional level, and the need to clarify from what moment a campaign participant acquires the status of a candidate – so as not to devalue this status. The rules governing the registration procedure should also be streamlined, noted Ella Pamfilova.

True, Boris Nadezhdin no longer heard these promises, as he left the meeting room to answer questions from journalists on the sidelines. Most of the journalists rushed after him, thereby terribly upsetting self-nominated Anatoly Batashev, whose question was next on the agenda. For the first time in history, a “green” activist is running for president of the Russian Federation, but this is not important for the media, he worried. “In fact, I really like our electoral legislation,” Mr. Batashev assured. “Ella Alexandrovna said it, but the media left and did not hear the main news story. We need electronic collection of signatures, this should be the main lead of today’s meeting! And now we will worry that we have offended liberal democrats…”

Well, the self-nominated Rada of Russians, whose turn to be refused registration came last, assured that she would be the one who would register the fastest in the event of electronic collection of signatures – she just couldn’t do it with paper autographs. Taking into account the experience gained during the presidential campaign, Ms. Russkikh, in her words, is already looking at “different options for what position she can apply for,” but in any case, she is sure that she will still be able to “be truly friends with the state.”

Anastasia Kornya