The current election campaign has become the calmest in a decade

The Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation (CEC) reported on the readiness for the elections. Governors will be elected in 14 constituent entities of the Russian Federation, deputies of legislative assemblies in six, deputies of city councils in 11, municipal elections will also be held in Moscow, and so on. Less than 3% of the total number of nominated candidates received refusals to register.

For self-nominated candidates, the percentage of refusals is 9%, the CEC reported. “The current election campaign has definitely become one of the calmest in the last 10 years,” said Ella Pamfilova, head of the CEC. “At the same time, the campaign is lively and competitive.” According to her, both election commissions, and candidates, and almost all parties “very responsibly, balanced and worthy” approached the procedures for nomination and registration. Complaints about the course of the campaign are rarer than ever, the CEC chairman said, totaling 1,406, and not a single one needed to be considered in Moscow. “Our modern electoral standards [последних федеральных кампаний] <...> are now being successfully implemented in regional elections,” boasted Pamfilova.

At the same time, more than 28,000 hacker attacks have been made on the resources of the CEC since June alone, she said, but all of them were stopped. For what purpose these attacks are carried out, Pamfilova did not explain, adding only that the attacks cannot damage the GAS Vybory system (voting results are entered into it), since it is autonomous from the Internet. “Remember the loud statements to “remove captcha” from our site, which would inevitably significantly increase the vulnerability of our resources? They won’t wait!” she said.

Vedomosti wrote that back in 2020, the CEC introduced on its website, where information from the GAS Vybory is published, a captcha that must be entered each time when viewing the voting results in order to prove to the system that the user is a person, and not a program. This technology was designed to prevent mass automatic uploading of data for all polling stations.

Alexei Makarkin, First Vice President of the Center for Political Technologies, agrees with Pamfilova’s assessment: “Of course, the campaign is calm: the opposition is behaving extremely humbly and is pleased that the regional elections have survived. It is not a matter of winning them, the mere participation in them gives parliamentary parties the opportunity to become fixed as part of the political system.” Makarkin noted that the campaign is calm, including due to the fact that there were no big scandals in the elections.

Interest in the campaign has fallen, and calmness is also associated with this, says electoral expert Grigory Melkonyants: there are some violations, but the main complaints are related to complaints about the advantage for “administrative candidates”. In his opinion, the “general attenuation of socio-political life” against the background of other trends led to the calmness of the electoral process.