The purpose of this Review is systematization of disembodied data appurtenant to elections held in Russia. It’s necessary to analyze:
1. Trends of expression of popular will during the last few years at federal, regional and municipal levels;
2. The most common methods of use of the so-called “administrative resource”, means of falsifications of election documents and ballot rigging;
3. Practice of trials on cases of election law violations.
Firstly, this will make it possible for us to understand, what difficulties will an independent candidate or a party face during an election campaign; secondly, to define a set of arrangements of counteraction to the “administrative resource” which may help an oppositional candidate or a party to stand a better chance even in conditions of direct confrontation with local authorities; and, thirdly, to substantiate the point of view that elections which don’t arouse suspicion and indignation among the advanced part of the society and international observers, will accord with interests of the federal authorities of Russia. This can be achieved only by electing truly independent candidates and electoral associations at all levels, in the first place – at the federal level.
It’s not our goal to repeat over and over again countless numbers of stories about how one or another candidate or a party wasn’t admitted to elections, was removed from an election campaign, or how their victory was stolen by gerrymandering or rigging elections. We will only show how such facts had affected composition of elective bodies, as well as reputation of institution of elections in people’s opinion.
Trends of expression of popular will at elections in 2003-2010
To have a clear view of the situation, we need to acquaint ourselves with graphic demonstrations which show election results in different regions of Russia. One can see below the integrated data of votes’ distribution in those regions where provincial legislatures were elected in March, 2010. For comparison, there are also data of votes’ distribution in the same regions for the same parties at parliamentary elections in 2003 and 2007, and elections of provincial parliaments of the previous convocations. Until 2007 the diagrams show a sum of votes for the Motherland Party, Party of Life and Party of Pensioners which were united in the Party Just Russia.
One can see that turnout in the 2010 winter elections was reduced in comparison with the 2007 Duma elections, and this resulted in reduction of percentage of United Russia. This is typical for all regions where elections were held in 2010.
Judging by the diagrams, the majority of voters persistently do not involved in elections. It is doubtful whether this may be a sign of people’s confidence to elections. The exception was in December, 2007, when 11.5 million absentees decided to use their active suffrage without the slightest cause. Moreover, the number of votes for United Russia was 22 million up on the previous parliamentary elections. This means that not only 11.5 million people who had never voted at all before, suddenly decided to vote for the ruling party, but additionally 10.5 million supporters of other parties voted for United Russia without rhyme or reason.
The reason for unprecedented increase of turnout and number of votes for pro-government parties in Africa or Central America is usually a ballot rigging. Regimes of such countries try to prevent arrival of foreign observers. International observers themselves often cease to work in such “sovereign democratic” states. In view of the fact that OSCE/ODIHR EOM refused to work in 2007 parliamentary and 2008 presidential elections in Russia, this affected the country’s reputation negatively.
Dangerous trends appeared at elections at lower levels since 2007. It seems as if municipal and provincial authorities decided after the 2007 parliamentary and 2008 presidential elections that they were allowed to solve problems of their re-election without worrying about how this looked from an outsider’s viewpoint and trampling down the electoral law and the Criminal Code of Russia. Their dismissive attitude to elections as some kind of formal and onerous ceremony which undermines the “unity of the nation, stability and continuity of the power”, led to the situation when the expertise of local authorities became not equal to the task of holding a competitive electoral campaign. Ungifted image makers and PR “experts” parasitize on local and regional authorities and make a profit out of feeble officials. Meanwhile, a practice shows that there is no election campaign which wouldn’t be botched up by such PR “experts”, if the notorious “administrative resource” hadn’t worked for them.
This gives us something to think about when the number of votes for one party increases in direct proportion to the turnout (in contrast to other parties). On the strength of it we can assume that in the absence of minimum voter turnout threshold local authorities have a direct interest in reduction of real turnout during a polling day. Puppet PECs are fully capable to compensate the low real turnout of voters for by ballot stuffing or by primitive replacement of “wrong” final protocols by “right” ones. One can prove this type of machinations only by recounting of votes, but you could count such precedents in the Russian jurisprudence on the fingers of one hand. However, when recounting happens somewhere, then the ballot papers in favor of other parties are found, as a rule, amidst ballots in favor of United Russia. For example, this happened with ballots in favor of Yabloko in the 2009 Moscow City Duma Elections at one of the polling places where the leader of this party himself had voted and found out later that in accordance with the data of the State Automated System “Elections” nobody voted for his party at this polling place. Blatant violations of law and ballot rigging were accompanied by public scandals which shaken the whole Runet, and spilled over into the long processes. However, only few cases on disputes arising from elections were decided against the ruling party or its candidates. Sometimes it came to adjudications which could be explained only by willful disregard of obvious evidences. In the majority of cases there were not even court examinations because many oppositional candidates and parties are not so naïve to assume that Russian judicial system is capable of trying such cases impartially. This enabled the winners and representatives of election commissions (including the CEC of Russia) to declare loudly, that “violations were not confirmed” and elections were “fair”.
Most of the Russian people, of course, are aware of what is going on (probably, these are people who don’t consider necessary to take part in a performance). Nevertheless, this absolutely hasn’t an impact on election results, because the minimum voter turnout threshold was providently repealed in 2007.
Take notice of rather high percentage of those who supported independent and extraparliamentary parties until 2006, and obvious drop of this percentage after 2006. Of course, the total percentage does not mean that independent parties got seats. On the contrary, the threshold for eligibility to win seats had prevented their representation in provincial parliaments separately, the more so because since 2006 this threshold was raised from 5.0 to 7.0 percent, electoral blocs were forbidden, and nomination of candidates who were the members of one party on the list of another party also was prohibited. Social movements were not allowed to be elected because of the statutory bar. Legal requirements for parties were multiplied by five (up to 50 thousand members in each of them) and this resulted in reduction of number of independent parties. Remember also abolition of election deposits and option “Against all” in ballots.
However, election deposits enabled oppositional candidates to be registered in elections without getting involved in procedure of the signature gathering. Meanwhile, this is exactly the procedure which is actively used by election commissions in order to eliminate candidates and parties which are out of favour and capable to compete with candidates of the ruling party at local or regional level. Therefore the requirements of election commissions to execution of signature sheets became hair-splitting: particularly, the slightest mistake at least in one word could lead to recognition of the whole signature sheet (with all signatures) as invalid. What is at issue is abbreviation of words in general use (election commissions tried to argue that they did not understand what words were implied). Also they consider as a mistake a lapse of name of administrative and territorial formation (Republic, Oblast, Krai) which include the municipal formation where a voter who signs the signature sheet has a residence permit (even if the municipal formation is the administrative center of a Republic or Oblast or Krai, for example, the city of Krasnoyarsk is the administrative center of Krasnoyarsk Krai; the city of Penza is the center of Penza Oblast etc.). Election commissions declare that they do not understand such things. Signature sheets also were recognized as invalid for the reason that they were untrue to type. It appeared that a candidate erased footnotes under the section: “Surname, first name, address of his the place of residence, type of personal identification document, series and number of this document, name or code of the issuing authority, date of issue”. But the simplest, of course, is recognition of more than 5 percent of signatures as unauthentic or invalid (previously this threshold was equal to 25%). The problem is that laws in force describe fuzzily the procedure of making an examination of signatures, and so people who act as experts generally turn out the concerned persons working in unauthoritative institutions and ready to deliver results on orders from local administration. As a result even manual signature of a candidate himself or his close relative was recognized as not authentic and if that person who signed the list came to the commission and tried to prove that it was his manual signature, he got an answer like: “Sorry, pal, but your signature is fictious. Go to the law”.
Realizing importance of the issue, Dmitry Medvedev in the 2009 Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation proposed to exempt all parties represented in the current convocation of a province parliaments from painful duty to gather signatures in order to be registered by an election commission to participate in elections of the next convocation of this elective body. Also President Medvedev declared: “I think that in future we should dispense with the idea of collecting signatures as a method of determining whether a party can stand in an election”. This is the only true way, because this procedure became in fact to look like a conveyor when several people forge voters’ signatures using data bases of residents of an area. And above all, candidates nominated by parties at municipal level also should be exempted from gathering of signatures. This will cushion the blow of reactionary officials who were displacing the electoral law during 2004-2007.
All these amendments were supposedly justified a necessity of increasing of role of parties in political life. But isn’t it obvious that the more parties are in the country, the wider choice for the voters? Apparently the authorities applied another logic - the more parties are in the country, the more difficult to control them. In this case, of course, reactionary actions described above were logical, and their successfulness was clearly confirmed by the practice (watch diagrams above and below). Abolition of direct elections of Governors and State Duma Deputies in single-seat electoral districts was explained in an even more original way: it turned out that this was caused by the “need for intensification a struggle against terrorism”.
As it was noted above, the side-effect of reactionary policies in the field of elections became apparent in a complete loss of ability of candidates of the ruling party at local and provincial levels to compete with oppositional candidates without use of the “administrative resource”. Bureaucrats preferred to ensure their “victory” by means of impertinent interference in electoral system, and this shaken people’s faith in elections.
But the 2009 autumn election campaign overstepped all conceivable limits, when heads and members of the PECs were massively engaged in primitive rewriting of final protocols in favor of candidates of one of the parties. The fact that such actions became the peculiarity of the Moscow City Duma elections and it had been done in front of hundreds of domestic observers aroused a wide indignation.
As is evident from the diagrams, trends of distribution of votes in Moscow do not differ much from other regions. There is obvious effect of reduce of turnout in comparison with the 2007 parliamentary election results, with the difference that advantage of United Russia over other parties proved to be overwhelming in October, 2009, and this was not characteristic for those regions where at the same time (and in March, 2010) were held the elections at the same level. In consequence of this, and also because of the high threshold for eligibility to win seats (7 percent), only United Russia and CPRF won seats in the MCD.
This looks strange against the background of other countries affected by the crisis, where the political forces which were in power now suffer a defeat or at least lose voices greatly. Quite the contrary, it turned out that the popularity of the ruling party in Russia had inexplicably increased.
However, this could be explained by deliberate directive of provincial authorities for reduction of turnout (this makes it possible for electoral commissions to rig elections by ascribing votes of absentees to one of the parties). For example, a lot of oppositional candidates in Moscow were not registered to participate in elections in 2009, and election campaigning in the mass media organizations has been reduced to a minimum (they simply had not informed the Moscow City Election Commission about their willingness to publish propaganda materials). At the same time candidates of one of the parties who were mainly incumbent deputies of the MCD, found a loophole which enabled them to publish reports about their work as deputies in the same mass media organizations which refused to advertise another candidate and parties, and also to use openly their own status during extensive media coverage of activities of them as deputies. The problem is that Russian laws have no differentiation between election propaganda and informing of people by means of mass media organizations, and this loophole is actively used by candidates who are already in elective office. Similar loophole in the elections of heads of municipal formations allows them not to be on vacation during electoral campaign, for the reason that they supposedly are not "local officials" but “persons who hold a municipal position”. In this case, that lawyers who defend such point of view could also be named not as “lawyers” but as “persons who were educated as lawyers” or something like this.
Returning to the Moscow City Duma (MCD) elections, one should note that the real turnout could not be more than 30%. Exit polls gave to candidates of United Russia not over 56% of votes, and the threshold for eligibility to win seats was overcame by CPRF, LDPR, Just Russia and even Yabloko. Results of public opinion poll conducted by Levada-Center during 22-27 October, 2009 differ fundamentally with official data of the Moscow Election Commission. 1000 respondents were interviewed. All results are shown in terms of turnout of 31%.
As one can see, this poll seems to be much more like the real indicators than official results. Of course, Yabloko would not overcome the threshold as opposed to LDPR and Just Russia.
It is not surprising that voters treat the MCD elections in 2009 with more distrust than in 2005.
Judging by the diagrams, the amount of residents of Moscow who viewed the elections with suspicion in 2009 rose by 22% in comparison with 2005 and became equal to the amount of those residents who had faith in the elections.
The situation was taking a dangerous form in other regions too. This alarmed the Kremlin, and so after the 2009 autumn elections it decided to appoint a special commission of elaboration of amending the electoral law in order to stop the bacchanal of abuses at law which overflew the electoral system. One of the recommendations of this commission was to hold provincial parliamentary elections only by party-list proportional representation system (now the half of the seats in provincial parliaments is filled using proportional representation and another half using the first-past-the-post system). This would induce the systemic opposition to figure on additional seats in provincial parliaments, because it is well known that candidates of United Russia practically always win in electoral districts, and 40-50% of votes for systemic oppositional parties turn out to aggregate result about 20-30% seats in legislatures. As is obvious from the diagrams, United Russia won up to 50% of votes during the 2010 winter election campaign in regions by proportional representation system, and this turned into 70% of seats owing to the fact that its candidates won in electoral districts. On the other hand some people are concerned that in this case oppositional candidates would not be elected in provincial parliaments at all, except those who contrived to come to an agreement with any party. Legal regulations which impose the obligation on parties to include independent candidates into their lists don’t work in practice.
It's important that the President Medvedev decided to impose a restriction on early voting at all levels. Since the autumn of this year early voting will be possible only for those voters who work at polar stations, keep watch at seagoing ships or live in out-of-the-way places. Now local authorities at the municipal level will not be able to reprint ballots in a secret press, and then force the employees of municipal organizations and companies under candidates nominated by a ruling party, as well as the pensioners and servicemen, come to TEC (TEC is a Territorial Election Commission. In the municipal elections functions of TEC are entrusted to Election Commission of the Municipal Formation) and vote early, and after that substitute ballots on illegally printed ones, which are already filled out in “appropriate” way. However, it’s possible that in the next elections the number of supposedly out-of-way places will increase sharply. But at least there will not be longer such cases when early voting in local elections reach 10-15% and all of these votes are in favour of one party.
However, voting by absentee certificates is a similar problem in Russia. This makes it possible to vote at any polling place (in fact – at the right place and time, where the assistance of the PEC members is guaranteed, and oppositional observers are already chucked out from the polling place by all means). Absentee certificates are usually issued in rather small numbers and ideally a voter may vote by the absentee certificate only once. However it came to patrolling of electoral districts by organized groups of voters in minibuses who vote more than once (sometimes they could be not only non-residents of the region where they vote repeatedly, but also even non-citizens of Russia). People are forced to agree to that (as well as in case of early voting) on pain of deprivation of bonuses, reduction in pay or discharge from office. On top of everything, oppositional candidates are unable to get any sense out of law-enforcement agencies, because the Highway Patrol of Russia refuses to issue to a candidate or even to a Regional Election Commission (as it occurred in Ryazan Oblast in March, 2010) any information about owners of vehicles which carry organized groups of voters with absentee certificates (in accordance with an order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia on registration of vehicles, such information could be issued only to a court, public prosecutor’s office or a traffic police department). So, more than 1.1 million votes by absentee certificates is much more serious resource than early voting, and this explains the fact that another suggestion of the President Medvedev (about limitation of absentee voting) has not yet taken the form of an engrossed bill.
Voting outside a polling station is an even more serious problem. Thus in 2007 parliamentary elections more than 4.5 million people voted outside the polling places (6.5% of the total number of valid ballot papers). This is 4 times more than amount of votes by absentee certificates (1.7%), and 31 times more than amount of votes by early voting (0.21%). Such situation means that federal authorities don’t stoop to rigging elections by means of early voting. So they easily took a decision to abolish early voting and had sacrificed the interests of local authorities which had already lost the sense of proportion and marred the ruling party's reputation. As concerns the voting outside the polling places, one could not expect any limitations. Meanwhile, members of PECs have already got accustomed to run all over the electoral districts with portable ballot boxes in hands, almost knocking at doors, asking anybody to vote and formalizing this by forged requests for vote outside the polling place. The members of PECs usually use for that registers of people who need social maintenance. In general, members of PECs overstep the limits in elections at municipal and provincial levels.
Take the 2007 Pskov provincial legislature elections, for example, they are interesting. The diagram below shows the distribution of ballots in portable boxes and number of votes for United Russia. It is obvious that in that districts where the amount of ballots in portable boxes raised sharply, the number of votes for United Russia had increased too. Was this a coincidence?
One should be especially impressed by voting outside the polling stations in the 14th and 18th electoral districts (there were about 40% of the total number of valid ballots in the portable boxes in each of these districts), and 17th and 20th districts (36% in each one).
How could it happen? Where had been the observers? It turns out that the techniques of this type of falsification are simple to excess. If you subdivide the available requests for the voting outside the polling stations into categories, then you will get “real” and “questionable” requests. A mobile group consisting of the PEC members and oppositional observers leave the polling station to work at the “real” requests, and the members of PEC who are included into this group try to hold the work up as long as it possible. Mode of operation concerning the “questionable” requests depends on circumstances – if it is necessary, members of the PEC distract unreliable observers from current developments at the polling station. However, there is a third conventional category of requests, which is registered by the PEC when all oppositional observers have already left the polling place. Then the brigade with the tried observers gets down to business and arranges an affair. Moreover, considering the right of the PEC to increase the amount of portable boxes at will, several brigades can be active at the same time at the same electoral district.
In comparison with the 2007 parliamentary election results, when 4.574 million people voted outside polling places (6.65% of the total number of valid ballots), the situation took a turn to a worse in 2008: there were already 5.786 people who voted outside the polling places (7.84%) in the presidential elections.
As one can see, the abolition of early voting, in fact, was not a matter of principle in respect of ensuring of predesigned election results at federal level, as opposed to absentee voting or voting outside the polling places. Let’s estimate the distribution of votes for United Russia and other parties by regions, for example, in the 2007 parliamentary elections. Second diagram shows in which regions the resource of voting outside the polling places was used intensively.
One may doubt the truthfulness of a party’s indicators beginning with 60%, but after 80% one can only be astonished by somebody’s foolishness, because the ruling party has been discredited for these results. Moreover, the highest indicators of United Russia were achieved in the most troubled regions of the North Caucasus, which have a whole set of socio-economic, political problems, high ethnic and religious tensions and which are not notable for democratic liberties. Is this coincidental? It is strange that in these regions the voting outside the polling stations was not as wide-ranging as one could think at first sight. Apparently, the authoritarian control of local authorities over these regions is so all-embracing that this enables them to achieve the sky-high results without early voting, absentee voting, voting outside the polling places (and, perhaps, without voters in whole).
On the contrary, voting outside the polling places was wide-ranging in the most of the Russian-populated regions of the Central, Northwestern and Volga Federal Districts. The record-holder in this field is the notorious Pskov Oblast; it seems that members of election commissions in this region chosen this method as their specialization and then started to gain an experience. Why the voting outside the polling places is high exactly in these regions of Russia but the level of support of United Russia is rather average? Apparently, their local authorities are not as authoritarian as ones in republics of the Northern Caucasus and Volga Region, and they are not able to achieve “needed” election results by primitive methods (like rewriting of final protocols), therefore they have to work much more delicately.
In such a case an informational field favorable to elections takes on special significance as a good confidence-building measure. In view of the fact that none of the positive changes which were under consideration of the commission of elaboration of amending the electoral law had not yet been come into effect, the 2010 winter elections were held in the same conditions as the 2009 autumn elections. However, the lack of sensational scandals during the 2010 winter elections and certain decrease of indicators of United Russia in comparison with the 2007 legislature elections resulted in rise of the public confidence in elections. Here is a good example – the public opinion poll conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center on 27-28 March, 2010. 1600 respondents were interviewed at 140 sampling points in 42 regions of Russia. The margin of error doesn’t exceed 3.4%.
These indicators correspond with results of the public opinion poll conducted by Levada-Center since February 19, 2010 till March 23, 2010. 1600 respondents were interviewed at 127 sampling points in 44 regions of Russia.
By the way, a note should be taken that the percentage of those voters who were satisfied with elections grew only at the cost of those who found difficulty in replying before. Those who were not satisfied with the 2009 autumn elections still have no confidence in elections.
In general, the tendency to growth of people’s confidence in elections clearly coincides with reducing of indicators of the ruling party and of its candidates at local and regional levels.
The Kremlin defined a goal to the local and regional authorities to put an end to primitive rewriting of final protocols and to decrease using of other forms of the “administrative resource”. This made it possible to avoid gross violations in the 2010 winter election campaign. This also predetermined the deplorable electoral results in those municipal formations (for example, in Irkutsk city) as well as worsening of quantitative proportions of votes for United Russia in comparison with the 2007 parliamentary elections, but this had saved the power’s face and above all nobody could tell that the “line of command” tottered.
So, here is an important conclusion: the more independent candidates shall hold elective offices, the better Russian reputation will become abroad, the higher will be the electorate’s confidence, and the fewer shall be a criticism from an oppositional candidates’ side.
Practice of trials on cases of election law violations
The 2009 Moscow City Duma Elections did not suit the Yabloko Party which had expected to receive a couple of seats. Therefore its lawyers launched a campaign for revision of the election results. Discrepancy between the official election results and figures in copies of final protocols on results of voting which were issued to observers by PECs, had given a rise to an action. In accordance with the law final protocol should be drown up at a polling place after the finishing of counting of votes. It should be signed by all members of a PEC and its attested copies should be issued to every observer. After that the head and the members of the PEC deliver the original protocol and sealed packs of ballots to a Territorial Election Commission. Then happy observers believe that their mission is accomplished and walk out. In this case nothing will prevent members of the PEC to go back from the Territorial Election Commission where a “wrong” protocol could be not accepted, and to rewrite the protocol in “right” way without presence of importunate observers. This technology has been tested in one of the cities of the Moscow Region in the spring of 2009 and proved itself to be effective because it had provided a re-election of an incumbent mayor who was defeated in elections with wide gap. A candidate, who had been cheated, immediately initiated a case before the court, but even after one year the trial didn’t give any results. Probably, election commissions in Moscow decided to put it to use massively under the impression of such effectiveness.
Lawyers of Yabloko naively supposed that the attested copies of final protocols were conclusive evidences. Some of heads of election commissions declared in courts that oppositional observers created the hard atmosphere at the polling places, it was psychologically hard to bear it, and this resulted in a lot of errors made by members of the PECs, therefore the attested copies of the final protocols should not be considered as evidences in whole. In other words, some suspects tried to prove that when observers tried to exercise their rights, they wounded the mental health of members of the PECs. Absence of the date and time of attesting a copy of a final protocol also was an argument against using it as evidence. Of course, this is a serious mistake of inexperienced observers who were not able to make sure that the copy was correct, although the members of PECs are answerable for correct attesting of copies.
One of the representatives of election commissions claimed that some observers got copies of so-called “training” protocols. They did not take the trouble of explanations why these “training protocols" had not any explanatory inscriptions (“Example” or something like that), and why these protocols were signed and sealed by PECs. Also they said that the reason for an identity of indicators in such protocols and official results concerning many parties except United Russia was a pure accident and nervous atmosphere.
Sometimes PEC chairmen acknowledged that they issued the “wrong” copies of final protocols, but the observers had been warned that these copies were “not final” and there could be errors. But in this case the heads of commissions could not explain why they signed these protocols and issued them to observers.
Things went as far as that a secretary of a PEC claimed to have printed the protocol supposedly only in order to show to the head of the PEC that it was just great, and then put it on a table and after that it disappeared. There also were other variations of this kind of explanations: a number of heads of the PECs declared that they had prepared just blanks, which, however, were signed and sealed by the members of the PECs, and these blanks lay on a table and anybody could swipe them.
In general, heads and members of the PECs absolutely did not fear for themselves when they confessed the facts in court, as if they knew that they will not be punished for it (anticipating things, it is necessary to note that really none of them was held criminally liable for this facts). One of the heads of PECs claimed that he gave to an observer a “useless scrap of paper”, “the first that was near at hand”. Another head said that there happened a computer malfunction which caused errors in a protocol, but he understood this only when observers had already gone with attested copies of the wrong protocol. At the same time he could not explain why indicators of United Russia have increased when the malfunction was eliminated. Some heads acknowledged that they have signed final protocols with their eyes closed. One confessed that he entered numbers in a protocol “unthinkingly”, just in order to ensure that all control relationships of the data entered in the protocols of vote returns were complied with. Another one simply stated that he did not remember what documents he signed and gave to observers, but “something was handed in [Territorial Election Commission] for sure”. These confessions were completely ignored by judges. This means that anybody may give any evidence in court, but a judgment absolutely not depends on this. Lawyers of Yabloko insisted on revocation of decision of PECs on the determination of vote returns and election results and demanded for a re-count. However, judges have dismissed cases in these ways.
Firstly, judges substituted certain claims by irrelevant legal regulations concerning revocation of a decision of a Regional Election Commission on the determination of vote returns and election results all over a region. Judges substantiated this by a Decision of the Constitutional Court of Russia about the previous election law expired 7 years ago. Judges interpreted this Decision in such a way that one could suppose that it had concerned exactly the revocation of decisions of a PEC.
Secondly, the judges believed that the rights of the Yabloko Party and of the voters were not violated, so they had no right to bring an action against election commissions.
Thirdly, the judges decided that the attested copies of final protocols without date and time should not be considered as evidences, and so lawyers of Yabloko were not able to substantiate their claims.
Fourthly, the judges had considered the fact of existence of different final protocols not as a violation of the electoral law, but as if it was a technical error. They don’t care that the law does not contain such a term.
So, all this means that well-trained observers and highly-experienced electoral staff of any oppositional party or candidate is the most important guarantee of success at any level. Unpopular local and regional authorities have never had to face a stunning resistance to “administrative resource”, so they will be taken aback and lose any elections. Only legally checked actions will make it possible for anyone to equalize chances in conditions of struggle with those who were repeatedly exposed as cheaters. Few victories over the local and regional bureaucrats in such way will enable a real opposition to pass on to changing of the “rules of the game”.
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