In our previous Review we analyzed results of the 2010 winter election campaign and described basic methods of falsification of election results (through voting at home, absentee voting and rewriting of final protocols of votes counting). We focused primary attention on suspicious disproportions of results of the 2007 parliamentary elections in comparison with results of previous elections, so now we know in what regions elections were rigged especially extremely.
In the current Review we're going to briefly analyze results of the 2010 autumn election campaign and see if there was any progress. Also we’ll continue analyzing results of the 2007 parliamentary elections because it’s very important on the threshold of the next parliamentary elections in December, 2011.
We'll assess last elections in accordance with the Methodology of the Organization of American States. The OAS methodology to evaluate elections takes as its starting point a definition of the concept of democratic elections. The concept of democratic elections is defined in such a way that elections are considered democratic when they fulfill four basic conditions.
First, elections must be inclusive, that is, all citizens must be effectively enabled to exercise their right to vote in the electoral process.
Second, elections must be clean; in other words, voters’ preferences must be respected and faithfully registered.
Third, elections must be competitive, that is, they must offer the electorate an unbiased choice among alternatives. Finally, the main important that the right to universal and equal suffrage is legally recognized, and the use of the right to vote is facilitated in practice. With respect to clean elections, the key issue is ensuring the integrity of voters’ preferences, as well as the faithful recording of these preferences. With respect to competitive elections, what is captured is that citizens have the right to run for public offices, but also that candidates running for office must be able to do so without concerns for their security and with equal opportunities in a context of respect for civil rights, such as freedom of the press, free access to information, and freedom of association, assembly, expression and movement.
Finally, the attribute regarding elective public offices is concerned with the access to all the main political public offices must be accessed through periodic elections, and the results expressed through the citizens’ votes must not be reversed. In sum, elections are democratic when they are inclusive, clean, and competitive and constitute the means of access to high public offices.
According to the first criteria elections were held without discrimination of voters who were able to exercise their right to vote. There were no significant legal or other hurdles to register to vote, to get to a polling station or otherwise cast a vote, information on the electoral roll was accurate and all eligible and willing voters were able to cast their vote and do so as intended.
As for the second criteria, everything is clear - though voters were able to vote without any outside pressure or fear of reprisals, it’s impossible to say that last elections were fair because not all ballots were scrutinized (i.e. checked and counted) and tabulated (i.e. aggregated) impartially and accurately.
So, we can see again the sharp growth of turnout and amount of votes for United Russia in 2007, however, there is a tendency to return to reality in the number of regions in 2010. First of all, we mean Kostroma, Magadan, Novosibirsk and Chelyabinsk regions - the turnout and amount of votes for United Russia there became more verisimilar as it was in 2003-2005. However, this has not happened in Tuva and Belgorod region. So, we have a question: “Why regional election commissions there did not consider it necessary to take into account signals given by the President's Administration and continued to stick to their guns and be in contrary with the process of modernization announced by the President Medvedev”? In any case, interdependency of turnout and amount of votes for United Russia is clear (the higher the turnout – the more votes for the party, and vice versa). The only question is whether this turnout is a real fact or it is the result of a primitive rewriting of final protocols of counting of votes?
Everything is clear concerning the third criteria. Elections in October, 2010 were not competitive because there were unreasonable legal hurdles to become a candidate, physical security of all candidates and party personnel was not guaranteed in all regions, candidates did not compete on a level playing field, candidates for office and voters were not allowed to organize and interact always freely.
Let’s see how many independent self-nominated candidates were to deputies of regional legislative bodies and municipal assemblies of regional administrative centers, and how many of them were registered by election commissions and presented in ballots during the voting day.
As you can see, only 37 percent of nominated independent candidates were presented in ballots at municipal elections of regional administrative centers, and only 43 percent - at elections of regional legislatures. It’s obvious that election commissions and local authorities in a number of regions unleashed a war against independent candidates. Moreover, we should take into account that alternates of the candidates of the ruling party are always presented in the ballots among independent candidates and formally they are “independent” candidates too, so the real amount of independent candidates is even less than at diagrams above. In these conditions it is extremely important for independent and oppositional candidates to appoint professional observers to every polling station in an electoral district.
Let’s find out first-priority regions where effective electoral observation should be conducted anyway. We suppose that these are those regions where United Russia got the most of votes in 2007 and so we'd like to compare this data with geographical distribution of votes given outside the polling places.
Amount of Votes for United Russia at the 2007 Parliamentary Elections
Voting Outside Polling Places at the 2007 Parliamentary Elections
Voting Outside Polling Places at the 2007 Parliamentary Elections
(percentage)
It’s clear that the regions where voting outside polling stations was the most intensive (more than 100,000 votes) and the regions where United Russia got the most of votes basically are the same. The following regions have left competitors far behind: Krasnodar region (196,000), Rostov region (184,000), Moscow region (180,000) and Voronezh region (174,000). A lot of votes in-home provided Kemerovo region (125,000), the City of Moscow (121,000), Nizhny Novgorod region (117,000), Bashkiria (110,000) and Sverdlovsk region (108,000). Tataria was short of 800 votes in-home to reach the mark of 100,000 votes. It’s interesting that the number of disabled persons (as a matter of fact, mobile teams from election commissions should come with boxes only to these people in order to help them to realize their suffrage) in the most populous Russian region with unfavorable ecology (Moscow) is 1,6 – 1,5 times lower than in Krasnodar and Rostov regions which are located near Black sea with a lot of health resorts, although the population of Moscow is 2 and 2,5 times higher than in these regions, respectively. If we talk about the percentage ratio of voters who voted at home in December, 2007, the leader is Pskov region (more than 15 percent of all voters) for some reason. The local governor should pay attention to the fact that percentage of disabled persons in this region is 5 times more than in Moscow. Or he should pay attention to the regional election commission, if everything is all right with amount of invalids.
Now, we have identified those regions of Russia where an effective network of observers should be established if any independent or oppositional candidate or party wants to win elections. Due to this reason, these regions also should be in the focus of international election observation missions. OSCE/ODIHR should pay attention to the election process in the North Caucasus, because domestic observers could be even killed there if they will try to observe elections impartially.
As for the last criteria of assessment, we can state that the amount of political offices filled through regular elections is steadily declining. Direct elections of city mayors have already been abolished in 106 important cities (administrative centers of regions and cities with population not less than 200.000 people).
So, elections held in October, 2010 were not democratic and fall short of international election standards.
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