Golos Movement: Voters’ and Candidates’ Rights Are Blatantly Violated During Municipal Elections in St. Petersburg

Declaration about blatant violation of voters’ and candidates’ rights in the elections of municipal deputies in St. Petersburg

Golos Public Movement declares blatant and defiant violation of electoral and other legislation in the process of calling for elections of deputies of several municipalities of St. Petersburg. As of today, we have information about violation of procedure of calling the elections and violation of citizens’ rights for nomination as candidates and for receiving trustworthy information about upcoming elections at 19 out of 109 municipalities of St. Petersburg. In the course of the election campaign’s first week, over 200 complaints were addressed to the various authorities and 40 reports were published on the Map of violations. Golos Movement demands that the bodies of executive power, law enforcement agencies and election commissions take immediate measures to restore the violated procedures and citizens’ rights, all the way to rescheduling the elections.

To date it has been registered that at 19 inner-city municipalities of St. Petersburg – Akademicheskoye, Aptekarsky ostrov, Vvedensky, Gagarinskoye, Ekateringovsky district, Zvezdnoye, town of Zelenogorsk, Krasnenkaya rechka, Kronverkskoye, Piskarevka, Polyustrovo, Rzhevka, Petrovsky, Posadsky, Pulkovsky meridian, Sampsonievskoye, Sergievskoye, Sosnovskoye, Chkalovskoye – the interested citizens were unable to gain access to the decisions of the local councils regarding the calling of elections. This information was suppressed by various methods, and this prevented the citizens from taking the timely actions related to their nomination as candidates.

In accordance with the law, the calling of elections of the deputies to the local representative bodies by municipal councils was supposed to take place from June 9 to 19, and the relevant decisions had to be published within the next 5 days. The Election Commission of St. Petersburg recommended that announcement of elections is made on the same day, June 19.

The voters and candidates have several methods of learning this information. They are guaranteed by article 6 of the Federal law “On Guaranteeing Access to Information about Activities of State Bodies and Local Self-Governance Bodies”: by reading about municipality’s decision in municipal newspapers when they are delivered to the district libraries; by familiarizing themselves with these decisions when they are published on the municipality’s official website or at the premises occupied by the local councils; by attending the meetings of the councils, or by receiving information about the decisions in response to the submitted requests for information. In Russia, the prevalent practice is also to publish these decisions at the information resources of the election commissions engaged in organization of the relevant elections.

It is from the moment of such decisions’ publication that the voters, potential candidates, political parties and news outlets are judged to be officially informed about the start of the election campaign. The date of publication is used to set the deadlines for performance of certain electoral procedures and actions.

On the eve of the election campaign’s start, civic organizations have appealed to St. Petersburg Election Commission with suggestion to publish all the decisions of municipalities regarding the calling of elections at the single website. This was due to the fact that in the course of the local elections held in St. Petersburg in 2014 certain municipal election commissions and municipal councils suppressed information about elections from the citizens, thus hindering their passive and other electoral rights. On June 11, St. Petersburg Election Commission responded to this suggestion and created such a website. In the news detailing the opening of the website it was said that municipal councils had to submit the relevant information to St. Petersburg Election Commission, while the Commission had to publish the received decisions within 24 hours of their receipt.

Nonetheless, some of the municipal election commissions ignored this suggestion.

The first information about “secretly” called elections to the municipal council of St. Petersburg’s Vyborgsky district (Sosnovskoye, Samsonievskoye and Sergievskoye municipalities) appeared on June

14. It was revealed that these municipalities called the elections on June 10 and also published the relevant decisions on that date. Nonetheless, it took a long time to discover the mandatory copies of district newspapers with this information at the district libraries that were supposed to receive them. The newspaper of Samsonievsky municipality #4 (86) dated June 10 didn’t appear at the library until seven days after its publication, on June 17. Out of 16 pages, only 12 were present, while the pages with information about calling the elections were absent. It wasn’t until later that another copy was delivered to the library, this time with all the pages intact. Also, on June 17, a copy of the newspaper of Sergievskoye municipality was also discovered with pages 3 to 6 containing decision on calling the elections, ripped out.

A similar technology of suppressing information about calling the elections was used up to June 18 by municipalities of the Moskovsky district (Gagarinskoye, Zvezdnoye, Pulkovsky meridian). All the attempts by potential candidates to find the relevant newspapers at the libraries and municipalities themselves, starting on June 14, brought no results.

It was also noted that employees of municipal council administrations interfered in every way with receipt of information about calling the elections: they would lock themselves inside the administration buildings, posted announcement about alleged breakdowns, closed the doors during business hours or took down all of the information signs so that the visitors couldn’t find them.

As a result, St. Petersburg Election Commission called on all the municipalities of St. Petersburg to provide information about calling the elections by June 21. It was only then that it became known that elections at Krasnogvardeysky district (Rzhevka, Polyustrovo) were called as early as June 9, at Kalininsky district (Akademicheskoye) on June 10, and at Kirovsky district (Krasnenkaya rechka) on June 11.

Information about calling the elections at Zelenogorsk (called on June 9) appeared on St. Petersburg Election Commission’s website on June 23. All six municipal councils of Petrogradsky district managed to keep the secret exactly for two weeks from the moment of calling the elections – this was only discovered at the extended meeting of St. Petersburg Election Commission with participation from representatives of municipal and territorial election commissions. At Ekateringofsky municipality, the officials were also able to keep the date secret although decision was allegedly officially published back on June 10.

We believe that withholding information about calling the elections and delaying publication of such decisions in 19 municipalities of St. Petersburg constitute a blatant violation of the citizens’ electoral rights. These cases should be investigated in full and the guilty should be punished.

In accordance with the national electoral legislation (article 3 of the Federal law #67) as well as the signed Convention on the Standards of Democratic Elections, Electoral Rights and Freedoms in the CIS States, the Russian Federation undertakes to hold the elections openly and publicly (article 7 of the Convention). This principle, among other things, envisions that election commissions conduct their activities openly and publicly; that decisions of the state authorities, local self-governance bodies and electoral bodies related to the calling, preparation and organization of elections are subject to mandatory official publication or have to be in other ways communicated to everyone as and when provided by the laws; and that the legal enactments and decisions concerning the citizens’ electoral rights, freedoms and obligations cannot be applied if they haven’t been officially published for the general public.

Contrary to the provisions of article 13 of the Federal Law #8 from February 9, 2009 “On Guaranteeing Access to Information about Activities of State Bodies and Local Self-Governance Bodies,” these decisions were not publicized on the municipalities’ websites, the relevant mandatory copies of municipal newspapers were not received by the libraries or were received as incomplete, and municipalities themselves failed to provide information to the citizens.

According to item 7 article 10 of the Federal Law #67 from June 12, 2002 “On the Principal Guarantees of Electoral Rights and the Right to Referendum of the Russian Federation Citizens,” decision on calling elections is subject to official publication in mass media no later than five days after it was made.

According to article 2 of the Law #2124-1 from December 27, 1991 “On Mass media,” the mass information is understood as printed, audio, audio-visual and other reports and materials meant for the public at large, while the mass media are the means of distributing mass information.

In light of the current situation it is obvious that the nominal publication of municipal councils’ decisions on calling the elections was meant for a very limited group of people. Therefore, such publication cannot be viewed as real until information wasn’t made available to anyone who made reasonable efforts to receive such information.

The Golos Movement supports the joint efforts of St. Petersburg Election Commission and the Central Election Commission of Russia to urgently settle the conflicts at seven municipal councils of St. Petersburg but considers it necessary to remind the parties about equal responsibility for violations and urges them to decide on all 19 cases. We would like to remind that in 2016, due to the unfounded reduction of terms of the meaningful electoral activities, the Central Election Commission of Russia came forward with an initiative to annul the already called elections at Moscow Region’s Barvikha. As a result, new elections were called.

Considering all of the above, the Golos Movement demands:

1. From the system of St. Petersburg’s election commissions:

• Judge the elections at municipalities Akademicheskoye, Aptekarsky ostrov, Vvedensky, Gagarinskoye, Ekateringofsky okrug, Zvezdnoye, town of Zelenogorsk, Krasnenkaya rechka, Kronverkskoye, Piskarevka, Polyustrovo, Rzhevka, Petrovsky, Posadsky, Pulkovsky meridian, Samsonievskoye, Sergievskoye, Sosnovskoye, Chkalovskoye as uncalled. To hold the new calling of elections in strict accordance with electoral legislation’s norms that guarantee the principle of openness and publicity in preparation and organization of elections and the principle of equal rights for the candidates;
• Make sure that St. Petersburg Election Commission designs and adopts methodological recommendations on acceptance of documents in the process of candidate nomination and guarantees timely input of information about the candidates into the Vybory State Automated System.

2. From the Prosecutor’s Office of St. Petersburg and the Main Investigations Directorate of the Investigative Committee of Russia for St. Petersburg — to review the actions of officials of the municipal councils and election commissions tasked with organizing the elections. If such actions are actionable, to hold the said officials liable for violation of federal laws “On the Principal Guarantees of Electoral Rights and the Right to Referendum of the Russian Federation Citizens” and “On Guaranteeing Access to Information about Activities of State Bodies and Local Self-Governance Bodies” all the way to criminal sanctions under article 141 of the Criminal Code of Russia, “Hindering a Citizen of the Russian Federation from Exercising Electoral Rights or an Election Commission from Carrying Out its Work.”

Golos Movement also appeals to the lawmakers with a suggestion to change the norms of electoral legislation on the calling of elections by representative bodies. We believe it expedient to forego the “spread” of several days and set a specific deadline for calling elections without decisions of the representative bodies. The authority to notify the public about the start of elections should be vested with the system of election commissions.

Appendix. Provision of information about the calling of municipal elections in St. Petersburg (compiled on the basis of monitoring from June 14 to 24, 2019)