“Map of violations” on the eve of elections

Overview of the situation four days prior to the single election day

A single election day will happen in Russia on September 10. Altogether 5,819 election campaigns and 230 local referenda will take place in 82 constituent territories. Eight-eight thousand candidates, representing 42 political parties and 6 electoral associations, are competing for 36,753 deputy mandates. Forty-six million people can come to the polling stations. Or, rather, they would’ve come in the Soviet era. Today, experts forecast that no more than a third of all voters will participate. 

Traditionally, “Map of violations” collects information from the candidates, voters, election observers and regular citizens regarding violations or instances that can be qualified as violations. On Tuesday, September 5, the “map” contained 458 reports from 48 regions. Over the previous week the number of reports has doubled, and 8 additional regions were added — and there’s more to come.

Moscow has knocked out all competition. There are 124 reports, which is three times as much as from the last week’s leader, the Altai Region. The majority of reports have to do with the start of early voting. First reports of refusals to allow absentee ballot voting (for different reasons, such as the absence of envelopes, seals, people with right to apply those seal, and demands to “come tomorrow” or “show your tickets”) have been registered at Brateevo, Izmailovo, Obruchevsky, Otradnoe, Nagatino, Yuzhnoe Butovo, Golyanovo, Metrogorodok, Meshchansky, Babushkinsky (twice), Levoberezhny and other districts.

The second part of reports reference the lack of information about upcoming elections and locations of the polling stations. Scientifically speaking this is called “drying voter turnout” — the less people know, the better they sleep, and elections will go on without them. Such signals were received from Lefortovo, Alexeevsky and Savelovsky districts. 

There have been attacks on the candidates — and this is in Russia’s safest city. On August 31, in Losinoostrovsky district, for example, a stranger beat up Andrei Ulinkin, a municipal deputy candidate from the “Party of Growth,” and unknown people threatened the campaigners for Donskoy district candidate Eduard Raspopin. Municipal candidates for the Pechatniki district Yulia Zhivtsova and Maxim Motin were detained on September 2 in the process of campaign promo installation.

Leaflets without any relevant information and unregistered with the election commissions have appeared in the districts of Solntsevo and Voykovsky.

The towns of the Altai Region continue to provide the news. Here, the voters are forced to deal with coercion to cast their absentee ballots for specific candidates. For example, the director of Barnaul school No. 127 refused to begin the meeting with the first graders’ parents until the parents vote early, while the director of school No. 128 ordered that 7 parents from each class have to vote early. The employees of the maternity hospital No. 2, welfare agencies and factories such as Biysk Oleum Plant and Barnaultransmash all have been told to vote early. On August 28, unidentified persons made gun shots at the apartment of Artem Turkov, the candidate for Biysk Municipal Duma.

Speaking of other regions, we’d like to point out large-scale campaigning at the educational institutions of the Tomsk Region, whose residents are set to elect the new governor. University principals and vice-principals, along with faculty deans and heads of departments are engaged in campaigning for the United Russia candidate; anniversary dates are conjured out of thin air and moved to different slots; campaign materials are hung all around schools and universities, even if their premises are used for district election commissions, such as the Gusevskaya High School, for example.

The HR department of Perm’s Mashinostroitel factory sent out special letters demanding that the plant’s employees take part in elections and vote for the “candidate from the President.” In the town of Balashov in Saratov Region, campaign banners of the Communist Party candidate Olga Alimova were removed from the local buses (despite being paid for from the election account) before the visit by State Duma chairman Vyacheslav Volodin. At the same time, the stories about United Russia campaign events shown on local TV, have not been paid for by the party or its candidates. At the town of Usolye-Sibirskoye in Irkutsk Region, people distributing a special newspaper issue criticizing United Russia candidate were attacked several times, and the newspaper’s editorial office has published an open letter to the head of the Main Administration of the Interior Affairs Ministry for Irkutsk Region. 

During the all-school assembly of September 1, the schoolchildren at the village of Mugreevskaya in the Ivanovo Region were given free presents from the United Russia party, despite the fact that election campaign is in full swing. The schoolchildren of Nizhny Tagil were given rulers with the candidates’ names — to remember them better. Yes, presents for the kids are a good thing, but the law should be the same for everyone. The residents of Nakhodka were also promised rewards if they vote for the “right” candidates, but this deception will be soon laid bare. The medical director of Sverdlovsk Regional Clinical Hospital Felix Badaev established strict control over the voting of his employees, compiling the lists of voters and demanding that they call back after casting their ballots. In addition to this, the employees are tasked with bringing 4-5 people along with them and making sure that those people also vote for the “right” candidate. We can only hope that such activities will have no reflection on the patients’ health. And, finally — the state-run Novgorod Regional Television did a broadcast of the free Garik Sukachev concert held under the promo baloons that said “I’m voting for Nikitin.” 

In conclusion we’d like to note that petitions were submitted regarding every fifth complaint received by the “Map of violations.” The number of petitions has exceeded a hundred. If this leads to actual reviews and measures taken, it would mean that the “Map of violations” fulfilled its mission.