The electoral commission did not notice the speeding

The Moscow Regional Court rejected the claim of Olga Privalova, a candidate for the regional Duma from A Just Russia – For Truth, who challenged the registration of Mikhail Zhdan, a self-nominated member of United Russia. The reason for the lawsuit was too fast collection of voters’ signatures: United Russia got 7,000 autographs in just five days. Mrs. Privalova stated that it was unrealistic to do this in such a short time, but the court found no violations in the signatures. The expert believes that it is theoretically possible to achieve such a “Stakhanovite” result, but in any case, the court cannot base its decision on mathematical collisions and statistical doubts.

The refusal to satisfy the claim of Olga Privalova, who is running for the Moscow Regional Duma in the by-elections in the Pushkin single-mandate constituency No. 17, was reported to Kommersant by her lawyer and ex-member of the Moscow Regional Electoral Committee Olga Balabanova. Ms. Privalova’s competitor in the district, Mikhail Zhdan, collected 7,242 signatures in five days, which, according to the plaintiff, is physically unrealistic. “He collected signatures with the help of five collectors. We even calculated the exact speed – 100 seconds for a signature with a ten-hour working day without lunch and rest, ”Ms. Balabanova explained.

By-elections in the Pushkin district were appointed in connection with the deprivation of deputy powers of United Russia member Sergei Babchenko in February 2023. Instead, United Russia (ER) nominated Timur Aparin, a municipal deputy from Pushkino, who won the primaries. But at the end of July, he withdrew from the election of his own free will. The party did not have time to nominate a new candidate, so Mikhail Zhdan, who is also a municipal deputy of Pushkino from United Russia, brought the documents to the election commission.

Boris Nadezhdin, a municipal deputy of Dolgoprudny near Moscow and a former candidate for governor of Moscow Region, told Kommersant that a self-nominated candidate in the elections to the Moscow Regional Duma must collect at least 6,811 signatures. Mikhail Zhdan collected signatures from July 18 to July 22 and, according to the first financial report, spent only 10 thousand rubles on this, Mr. Nadezhdin said: rub., that is, approximately 35 kopecks. for the signature.

Olga Balabanova noted that the court “does not allow getting acquainted with the signatures in any way”: “He examines the signatures himself and informs the parties whether he likes the signature or not. Without showing, he simply names the folder, sheet and signature number. Representatives of Mr. Zhdan at the court said that in order to speed up the process, they distributed the sheets to families, and then the collectors took them away, Ms. Balabanova continued: “As a result, the court did not find violations in the signatures of candidate Zhdan and refused to withdraw his candidacy from the elections. We plan to appeal this decision. Regardless of how the outcome of the review will affect the campaign, the main goal of the appeal is to stop similar procedural restrictions in the future.”

Mikhail Zhdan refused to comment on the court decision to Kommersant. State Duma deputy, member of the presidium of the political council of the United Russia near Moscow, Sergei Pakhomov, told Kommersant that the party supports Mr. Zhdan, who leads the United Russia executive committee in Pushkino, and does not consider assistance to him as a party resource “something extraordinary.” The speed of collecting signatures, according to the deputy, is explained by the large number of party supporters in the Pushkin district: “United Russia has more than 3,000 active members and supporters in this territory. The level of support for the party in the region today is 45-46%. Such a large resource can be mobilized in the shortest possible time.”

According to Oleg Zakharov, an electoral lawyer, ex-head of the Yaroslavl Regional Electoral Committee, such a “Stakhanovite” result is possible only with an “army of professional and motivated collectors”: money and professional collectors. The election commission decides on the issue of verification of signatures at its own discretion and can do it selectively, while the court, as a rule, does not initiate an expert verification, the expert continues. “And since the court cannot base its decision on mathematical collisions and doubts in the “Stakhanovite” statistics of the pace of collection of signatures, then the argument itself that the signatures were collected “too quickly”, in the absence of evidence of their forgery, is doomed to failure,” says Mr. Zakharov. – Although such incidents show that it would be good to prescribe in the law an objective criterion for involving an expert to verify signatures – for example, if other candidates demand it.

Elena Rozhkova