The State Duma will be additionally elected without foreign votes, in Khabarovsk the local election commission will vote
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The Central Election Commission (CEC) on Wednesday scheduled by-elections to the State Duma in four single-member districts, in which for the first time Russians living abroad will not be able to participate. In addition, the commission took advantage of another novelty of the electoral legislation, allowing the Khabarovsk Territorial Electoral Commission to take over the organization of the election of the mayor of Khabarovsk, one of the last regional capitals that retained the direct election of the mayor. Given the protest reputation of the region, it was simply impossible to entrust the conduct of elections to someone other than the regional election commission, the expert explains.
By-elections to the State Duma will be held on September 10 in Crimea (Simferopol constituency No. 19), Krasnoyarsk Territory (Divnogorsk constituency No. 56), Karachay-Cherkessia (Karachay-Cherkess constituency No. 16) and the Lipetsk region (Lipetsk constituency No. 114). As expected, on June 15, the decision to call the elections will be published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, and from June 16 it will be possible to start nominating candidates, said Ella Pamfilova, chairman of the Central Electoral Commission. Until July 11, parties will have to submit lists of candidates to the CEC for certification, and no later than July 21 – to submit documents to district election commissions (self-nominated candidates must do this before July 10).
According to Ms. Pamfilova, all direct gubernatorial elections have also been scheduled: they will be held in 21 regions, and in six they managed to nominate a total of 15 candidates. In total, more than 3,000 campaigns will be held in 85 regions of the Russian Federation. As expected, in the near future the CEC will also give permission to hold elections in four new regions.
At the by-elections to the State Duma-2023, for the first time, there will be no voting abroad, said Nikolai Bulaev, deputy chairman of the CEC. According to amendments to the electoral legislation made in May, Russians outside the country will now vote only for party lists. That is, in the main elections to the Duma, they will receive only one ballot, and they will not be able to vote in by-elections in districts. This is long overdue, Mr. Bulaev admitted, “and this is a great relief.”
Recall that almost 1.9 million Russian voters who are considered living abroad are scattered across 75 single-member constituencies in more than 30 regions. However, as CEC member Yevgeny Shevchenko clarified, foreign voters are assigned to only one of the four districts where by-elections are now scheduled – this is the Lipetsk district, which includes 10,594 voters from Moldova.
Another novelty that will be implemented in the 2023 elections is the recently received right by regional election commissions, in agreement with the CEC, to organize municipal elections in the capitals of the subjects. The Khabarovsk Regional Electoral Committee was the first to apply for such permission (on September 10, the mayor of the regional center will be elected there) and immediately received it.
According to Denis Kuzmenko, chairman of the regional election commission, the municipal commission was liquidated last year. According to the old rules, it was possible to assign its powers only to territorial or precinct commissions, but the new law allows the commission of the subject to take over everything. Such an initiative would raise the level of organization of municipal elections, Mr. Kuzmenko argued, besides, the city accounts for almost half of all voters in the region. According to him, the regional electoral commission has a qualified apparatus, high-quality office equipment, is located in the city center and, in the absence of large-scale regional campaigns, will be able to devote all its attention to municipal elections. The CEC found no objections to this, and the initiative was approved.
Elections of the mayor of Khabarovsk have not yet been scheduled and, accordingly, no one has nominated candidates yet, Mr. Kuzmenko specified. But it is already known about the participation in the campaign of the current mayor Sergei Kravchuk, who won the United Russia primaries the day before. Opposition parties have not yet announced their candidates.
The Khabarovsk City Electoral Committee remained one of the few who retained the right to hold elections for the head of the regional center, but this did not save him from being abolished as part of a general cleansing of municipal electoral committees, notes electoral lawyer Oleg Zakharov. Since these commissions are formed and financed by local authorities, and elections are held only by local authorities (and mostly deputies – elected mayors can be counted on the fingers of one hand), they, of course, were more focused on their counterparts in the local establishment, and not on higher election commissions and CEC, says the expert. In his opinion, taking into account the protest reputation of the region, it was simply impossible to entrust the election of the second most important elected person in the region to someone other than the regional election commission. Moreover, Denis Kuzmenko, who has been heading the regional election committee since 2021, has long been working in the system of executive power, and then in the electoral vertical, and is generally considered a person close to the leadership of the CEC. And in this sense, the election of the Khabarovsk mayor was transferred to the reliable hands of a proven professional, Mr. Zakharov states.
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