The electoral system is almost trouble-free – Newspaper Kommersant No. 165 (7366) of 09/08/2022

Chairwoman of the Central Election Commission (CEC) Ella Pamfilova at a meeting of the commission on Wednesday reported on the readiness of the electoral system for the Single Voting Day (EDV) on September 11. According to her, despite attempts by Western enemies to influence the course of the election campaign in Russia, it is going smoothly, there are “more than ever” complaints, and the percentage of refusals to register is record low. The expert believes that the severity of the pre-election struggle has sharply decreased against the backdrop of rallying parties due to a special operation in Ukraine, the opposition is afraid to criticize the government, and the “nightmare” for opposition candidates for governor is “to be elected and become the new Furgal.”

Ella Pamfilova began her report on readiness for the EDG with the main electoral challenge – attempts by the unfriendly West to interfere in Russian elections. According to her, this manifests itself in a whole factory of fakes, and in biased publications in the media, and in hacker attacks on the resources of the Central Election Commission, of which 28,000 were recorded from the beginning of June to September 7. But since the state automated system “Vybory” is completely autonomous and does not depend on the Internet, then the task of the organizers of these attacks, according to Ms. Pamfilova, is to replace the numbers and information published on the CEC website.

Meanwhile, the current campaign is one of the calmest in the last ten years, the CEC chairman continued. Appeals and complaints are “as few as ever”: as Ms. Pamfilova admitted, for the first time in her memory during the campaign, not a single complaint was received that required consideration at a CEC meeting. In addition, a “record low percentage of failures” was recorded. There are 69,458 candidates registered for elections at all levels, including 12,628 self-nominated candidates. “Less than 3% of the total number of nominated candidates received refusals to register – a total of 2236 people,” Ella Pamfilova specified. At the same time, only 1% of candidates from parties and 9% of self-nominated candidates were rejected. In the gubernatorial elections in 14 regions, four candidates were rejected, the head of the CEC added: “The percentage of candidates rejected this year is less than 5%. For comparison: last year and in 2020, the share of registration refusals at the level of heads of regions was 20% and 34%.” 40 party lists were registered in the elections to the legislative assemblies of the regions, only two were denied registration, that is, less than 5%, Ms. Pamfilova noted. In 2021, there were 13% failures, and in 2020 – 20%. In single-mandate constituencies, 893 candidates, including 49 self-nominated candidates, were nominated for regional parliaments, 804 and 23 candidates, respectively, were registered.

Recall that the election campaigns this year are held in 82 regions of the Russian Federation, in particular, in 14 regions there will be direct elections of heads, in 6 – deputies of legislative assemblies, in 12 – deputies of city dumas of administrative centers. Competition in the gubernatorial elections, according to the CEC, is five people per seat, in elections to legislative assemblies and city dumas – nine people per mandate. In total, more than 31.2 thousand deputy mandates and elected positions are expected to be filled in the EDG-2022. For vacant seats, according to Ella Pamfilova, representatives of 22 parties out of 29 eligible to participate in the elections will compete. Candidates from two parties (Party of Progress and the Russian People’s Union) were denied registration, and five more parties are not participating in the campaign: these are Civil Force, Alternative for Russia, PARNAS, the Party of Small Business and Power to the People.

More than 110,000 people expressed their desire to take part in remote electronic voting (DEV) on the federal platform, which this year will be used in seven regions (Kaliningrad, Kaluga, Kursk, Novgorod, Pskov, Tomsk and Yaroslavl regions). “There is quite a lot of speculation and exaggeration of the importance of the DEG in these elections,” said Ms. Pamfilova. In her opinion, the proportion of those who vote online will be relatively small. “I will repeat once again: we are going (in the direction of the development of the DEG.— “b”) very carefully, carefully and deeply studying all the pluses and minuses,” the chairman of the Central Election Commission emphasized. Recall that in Moscow, where its own platform will be used and the electronic voter register will be used for the first time, it is no longer required to apply for a DEG in advance. Testing of the system in the capital took place at the end of August, the Moscow City Electoral Committee announced the elimination of the identified shortcomings.

The severity of the election campaign in 2022 has fallen sharply, including due to “consolidation around the flag,” political consultant Yevhen Minchenko states: “It is very difficult for opposition parties to criticize the authorities, because this can be regarded as criticism of the country.” According to the expert, the “nightmare” of any opposition gubernatorial candidate is to be elected and turn out to be the “new Furgal” (LDPR member Sergei Furgal won the election in the Khabarovsk Territory of the incumbent United Russia governor in 2018, but in the summer of 2020 he was arrested for murder charges). “I think the importance of the electoral prize itself has somewhat decreased, and this has affected the severity of the election campaign. There are excesses, such as the withdrawal of absolutely vegetarian candidates from the New People in the Pskov region, but I think that this is such a regional fluctuation,” Mr. Minchenko sums up.

Elena Rozhkova