The Communist Party of the Russian Federation wants to deal with the elections

Deputies of the Communist Party faction, headed by their leader Gennady Zyuganov, submitted a draft electoral code to the State Duma last Wednesday. Representatives of the parliamentary opposition took a number of proposed innovations positively. But United Russia believes that the time has not yet come for the codification of the electoral legislation. According to the expert, the draft Communist Party of the Russian Federation contains many useful proposals, but needs to be improved.

The authors of the 453-page document point out in an explanatory note that the idea of ​​an electoral code is not new: the Supreme Council already tried to implement it back in 1992. Later, parties and the expert community were engaged in similar developments. In its version of the code, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation proposes a number of innovations: for example, to make the third Sunday of March a single voting day, to abandon multi-day and remote electronic voting (DEG), to cancel the possibility of expressing will in the adjacent territories, to prohibit state and municipal employees from entering election commissions. The Communists also consider it necessary to ban the practice of “locomotives”, when the lists are headed by a popular person who subsequently renounces the mandate, to cancel the municipal filter in gubernatorial elections, to introduce the principle of the immutability of the regulatory framework during the election campaign. In addition, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation proposes to abandon the formation of polling stations with a significant number of voters (now in some cases it is allowed to form polling stations with the number of voters exceeding 3 thousand people). Another suggestion is to introduce a criterion for the significance of errors in candidates’ documents when making decisions on their registration or refusal to do so. In addition, the Communist Party proposes to introduce a notification procedure for election rallies and to return broadcasting to the Internet from CCTV cameras at polling stations. The authors of the draft also propose not to include military conscripts in the lists of voters for participation in elections to the authorities of the Russian regions.

The government has already given a negative response to the initiative: its adoption will require additional funding from the budget (in particular, for the installation of video surveillance systems at polling stations), and its sources have not been identified.

However, the co-author of the project, Yuri Sinelshchikov (KPRF), believes that the chances of the code being adopted should not be underestimated, since the party in power has no reason not to support the document. “Of course, we want to simply draw attention to the many issues that we raise. But why did we suddenly decide that we have no chance of success? The most important thing is that we have formed a single system from disparate legislative acts. If I were United Russia, I would adopt the code in the first reading, and then make amendments to the second,” the communist told Kommersant.

However, United Russia, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on State Construction and Legislation Pavel Krasheninnikov believes that the time has not yet come for the adoption of such a document. “At this stage in the development of our society, when the electoral legislation is in full swing and constantly changing, it is impossible to codify the legal norms,” the parliamentarian explained to Kommersant. “They codify the rules that have been established for decades. This is not here and is not expected in the near future, not because someone does not want or is bad, the relationship is unstable. You can’t build a good house in the middle of a stormy river. The Code must be a solid and durable document.”

But representatives of Just Russia – For Truth (SRZP) are ready to support the communists, as they agree with them on many positions, and in 2012 they offered their own version of the code, party chairman Sergei Mironov told Kommersant. “The Electoral Code should solve two main tasks – avoiding any restrictions on the electoral rights of citizens and from the political monopoly of a well-known party. And this monopoly, thanks to the laws adopted by the Duma majority, is only being strengthened, ”explains the party member. According to him, these “harmful processes” need to be reversed, which is what “colleagues from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation” propose and what the SRHR insists on with its initiatives.

From a legal and technical point of view, the electoral legislation is “morally obsolete”, it contains many internal contradictions due to numerous changes, admits Alexei Didenko, State Duma deputy, deputy head of the LDPR central apparatus. However, he calls for approaching new changes carefully and without drastic reforms. Thus, Mr. Didenko is skeptical about the abolition of multi-day voting and the DEG, since such an expression of will is convenient for people. The practice of “locomotives” can be limited, but not in relation to party leaders, the liberal democrat believes. Well, the party proposes to postpone the elections not to March, when “it is still cool in some regions”, but to April. The Liberal Democratic Party agrees with the softening of the municipal filter.

The press service of New People explained to Kommersant that the party would not support the communists’ project, since it was obviously impassable, which only hindered real changes in the electoral system. However, the “New People” are in favor of an equal balance between the majoritarian and list systems for electing deputies, the establishment of one voting day, and increasing the transparency of the municipal filter. “At a minimum, a system for putting down the signatures of deputies should be introduced to pass the municipal filter through the State Services,” say New People.

Electoral expert Arkady Lyubarev in 2011 also prepared a draft of the electoral code, and last November published on the website of the Golos movement (included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of foreign agents) a detailed analysis of the communist initiative. As he explained to Kommersant, the authors did not take into account most of his comments. So, the expert considers the lack of a separate chapter on electoral systems an omission of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. “Its absence, in particular, leads to the fact that the norms that determine the electoral system find themselves in the most unexpected places,” the expert wrote. Also, the communists did not consider the problem of regulating regional and municipal elections. Although a significant part of these norms is rigidly enshrined in federal law, some of them are regulated only as a framework, and a number of them are dispositive in nature, which allows regional authorities to introduce or cancel certain rules. “According to a number of important norms, the regional legislator has unlimited possibilities for his own regulation,” the expert adds. He also notes that the draft does not contain norms defining in which case a candidate in the gubernatorial elections is considered elected. Also in the document, as well as in the current legislation, there is no regulation of the division of party lists in regional and municipal elections into territorial groups, the expert notes. Mr. Lyubarev supports the idea of ​​stabilizing the electoral legislation, but believes that many minor norms can be revised at a later date: “Otherwise, we will lose the opportunity to improve the electoral laws in the last year before the elections, when they are given more attention.” According to Arkady Lyubarev, the chapter on the nomination and registration of candidates needs to be radically revised. In particular, he proposes to restore the electoral deposit (used in Russian elections from 1999 to 2008) and improve the procedure for collecting signatures, including with the use of electronic services.

Ksenia Veretennikova, Maria Makutina