The “twins” will be hit with a look and a place – Newspaper Kommersant No. 146 (7347) of 08/12/2022

The leader of the Moscow branch of the party “Fair Russia – For the Truth” (SRZP), State Duma deputy Dmitry Gusev on Thursday submitted to the lower house a draft amendment to the electoral legislation. The document proposes to oblige electoral commissions to display candidates’ photographs on the stands of polling stations and indicate on the ballots the candidate’s inner-city district of residence, if he is registered in a city of federal significance. Right-wing Russians are confident that such amendments will make it possible to more effectively combat the technology of “twins”, which is still used in elections.

Dmitry Gusev proposed to make two amendments to the basic federal law “On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights and the Right to Participate in a Referendum of Citizens of the Russian Federation”. According to the first of them, photographs of candidates (with their consent) must be displayed on information stands equipped in the premises of polling stations. Now Art. 61 of the above-mentioned law refers to mandatory information for posting on the stands only the biography of candidates, an indication of the form of their nomination, information on income and property, and data on “facts of the candidate submitting false information”. Another amendment provides for the inclusion in the ballot of information about the inner-city district in which the candidate lives, if it is a city of federal significance (Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sevastopol). The current art. 63 requires only the name of the region, district, city or other locality to be indicated. Moreover, earlier the Supreme Court explained that “intra-city areas are not subject to the law.”

The explanatory note to the bill notes that the proposed changes will simplify “the process of identification of candidates by voters” and increase the “transparency of the electoral process of municipal elections.” In particular, the indication of the area of ​​registration, according to the author of the project, will lead to the fact that voters “are much more willing to vote for their neighbors than for those who are tied to the territory only by work.”

At a press conference that the Right-wing Russians held on August 11 to explain their initiative, Anatoly Wasserman, a member of the SRZP faction, admitted that the new norm on indicating the address, if it had been adopted before the 2021 State Duma elections, would have hit him: “I did not run for the district where I live, because I didn’t want to run across the road to Galina Khovanskaya, but, of course, it’s not about me personally. ” Dmitry Gusev responded by saying that the amendment he proposed would be valid only in municipal elections. True, this does not follow from the bill itself, since the description of stands and ballots in the mentioned articles of the law applies to all levels of elections.

We also note that during the current municipal campaign in Moscow, some candidates applied for registration in several districts at once. Most often, representatives of the non-systemic opposition acted in this way in order to increase the chances of registering in at least one district, which might not coincide with the place of their residence or activity.

The oppositionists interviewed by Kommersant said they would support the amendment on the mandatory posting of photographs.

Thus, Moscow City Duma deputy Maxim Kruglov (Yabloko) believes that without photographs of candidates on the stands, “the problem of identifying spoilers is practically unsolvable.” “In the event of a candidate’s last name change, this information is reflected on the poster. But as for the spoilers that didn’t change their names, there’s nothing you can do about it,” Mr. Kruglov explained.

Alexander Zamyatin, one of the coordinators of the platform for supporting independent candidates VDvizhenie, deputy of the Moscow district of Zyuzino, is also sure that the photos on the stands are “definitely needed”: “This is an important part of the visual identification of a candidate. In municipal elections, candidates can have a lot of personal contact with voters, so people remember active candidates not only by their last name, but also by their appearance.”

Deputy of the Kuntsevo district Aleksey Alekseev (KPRF), who is fighting Alexander Alekseev, nominated by the Communists of Russia party, in the autumn elections, believes that he may well suffer due to the lack of photos on the stand. “An inexperienced voter can be inattentive and think that this is the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and fall into their trap,” the deputy fears. Without photographs, the identification of the “original” is difficult, so the communist recommends that the residents of their area, before coming to the site, remember the full names of their chosen ones.

At a press conference, Dmitry Gusev made the reservation that his amendments could not enter into force already in the 2022 elections, since the State Duma would meet after the holidays after the end of this campaign. But in this way, the deputy, according to him, expects to draw more attention to his project and increase the chances of its adoption.

Kira Heifetz