Express review of public observation on the first voting day on September 6, 2024

General statistics

The Golos Movement has been receiving data from the country’s regions submitted by voters and vote organizers, observers and mass media representatives through various channels, including the 8 800 500-54-62 hotline, the Map of Violations, mass media, the Internet, social media, and messengers. 

The Golos Movement received 107 violation reports submitted to the Map of Violations and through other digital communication channels on the first voting day as of 23:59 Moscow time, September 06, 2024.

In total, during the election campaign, the Map of Violations and other digital channels have received 360 violation reports.

On September 6, the top five regions reporting alleged violations through the Map of Violations were:

1. Moscow — 48
2. St. Petersburg — 26
3. Moscow Oblast — 13
4. Mari El — 4
5. Tatarstan — 3

In total, during the election campaign, the regions reporting most to the Map of Violations were: 

1. Moscow — 77
2. St. Petersburg — 51
3. Samara Oblast — 41
4. Tatarstan — 36
5. Moscow Oblast — 27

Principal trends of the voting day

As we noted in one of our previous reports, the 2024 elections on the Single Voting Day predominantly take place in an administrative-mobilization vein.

The key task of administratively approved candidates (and these are not only the United Russia members, but also some self-nominated candidates, and in some casesmembers of other political parties) and of those who ensure victory was to mobilize dependent voters. Another task was to block competitors from monitoring whether electoral laws and procedures were followed at and around polling stations.  To implement the first task, preparations had been made before the voting started: lists of mobilized voters from state-owned and educational institutions, enterprises and commercial entities had been compiled; time for voting had been set and reporting forms had been adopted. In that way, the institutions and enterprises ensured that the dependent voters under their control went to vote as directed  The second task was assigned to election commissions: to limit the activities of competitors’ observers.

Therefore, on the first day of voting, there are two main groups of reports on the ongoing elections: evidence of administrative coercion of voters to vote on a working day (on Friday) either at polling stations or through Remote Electronic Voting (REV), and various unlawful restrictions for observers. 

There was also a third task: to create conditions for falsifying voting results, if necessary. Preparations for this have been underway; some of its elements have already been identified by observers. First of all, this concerns outdoor voting.

Signs of coercion to vote

On September 6, various country’s regions reported actions to mobilize voters. For example, reports came from Bashkortostan where health workers from hospitals in Ufa were required to post their photos from polling stations on their social media accounts; similar cases were reported from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Penza and other territories. It has become common to require dependent voters not only to take photos at polling stations, but also to share their geolocation tags using a special QR code or SMS, as it was at PEC (Presinct Electoral Commission) No. 1445 in St. Petersburg. Voting of state employees (e.g., the State Budgetary Educational Institution ⎯ Secondary School 385 in the Krasnoselsky District of St. Petersburg) and students (Penza University of Architecture) is controlled.

Remote Electronic Voting (REV)

As of 19:00 Moscow time, online voter turnout was 70%. 

The Republic of Mari El ranks first in terms of the REV turnout: 83% of voters voted online through Remote Electronic Voting (REV). The Altai Republic ranks second (78% of voters voted through REV), followed by the Kamchatka Territory (77%). Vologda (76%) and Lipetsk (76%) oblasts are among the top 5 oblasts in terms of the REV turnout. 

Apparently, having learned from the bitter experience of the previous elections, when the strange activity in the REV became visible to observers during technical failures due to the system overload, this time the e-voting mobilizers tried to distribute the voting load on the system more evenly and to make the REV turnout look more natural. Perhaps this is why instructions are posted in the chat rooms of various budgetary institutions with the exact time when their employees should vote through REV. For example, the Moscow Metro employees were obliged to start voting at 12:00 sharp (“you shall not vote earlier!”), and medical doctors at Moscow Polyclinic No. 131 (Branch No. 4 in Troparevo-Nikulino) had to vote at 12.00 sharp.

At that, the Federal REV Platform failed again. The list of scheduled elections in REV indicated the presidential election. This was discovered by Viktor Tolstoguzov, an expert in electronic vote counting systems. Tolstoguzov filed a complaint about this to REV territorial electoral commission.

At the beginning of the day, the REV portal did not allow downloading blockchain transactions from the voting portal (it was fixed later).

In addition, Pavel Tarasov, Member of the Moscow City Duma, while at the Public Observation Headquarters under the Civic Chamber of Moscow, revealed a quantitative discrepancy between the printed “paper trail” of the Moscow REV and the statistical data published on the portal.

Restrictions on paper voting in Moscow

A report released on the eve of voting highlighted that Moscow had in fact unlawfully replaced traditional paper voting with e-voting. Paper voting itself is subject to unreasonable requirements, conditionalities and difficulties, and voters who still intended to vote by paper ballot were discriminated against.

As we had expected, non-electronic voters faced obstacles in exercising their right to vote on the voting day and they were obstructed by different approaches masterminded by election commissions. In some places, it was enough for election commissions for voters to simply specify “valid reasons” in their paper ballot applications, while other election commissions (for example, at polling station No. 1976 in Moscow) unlawfully required voters to provide certain supporting documents proving such reasons or rejected voters’ paper ballot applications for some other reasons (for example, at PEC No. 2935, PEC No. 1407). Reports that voters were unable to vote using a paper ballot came all day long from various districts of Moscow. In some places, PEC members were very persistent in trying to persuade voters (for example, at PEC No. 2206) to vote via an electronic voting terminal (EVT), rather than by paper ballots. Some polling stations agreed to issue a paper ballot only under great pressure from voters, as well as from candidates and even police officers called in by voters. Some voters’ paper ballot requests were rejected straightforwardly.

Thus, election commissions, instead of assisting voters in exercising their right to vote, actually prevented it.

Obstructing election observations

As a rule, the hotter and the more competitive an election campaign is, the more challenges observers see in opposition candidates and parties. 

Candidates and parties in Saint Petersburg report serious problems with granting observers' access to polling stations.

This began a few days before the voting day, when candidates and party representatives were unable to submit lists of observers to territorial electoral commission in a number of city precincts, in the Krasnoselsky District in particular. The offices of a number of TECs were closed. None of the commission leaders answered phone calls. As a result of the territorial electoral commissions inaction, candidates were forced to e-mail their lists or submit them through the City Election Commission (CEC).

According to Nadezhda Tikhonova, Head of the St. Petersburg Branch of A Just Russia, this resulted in over a hundred party observers being unable to enter polling stations in the Central and Krasnoselsky Districts. The City Election Commission believes that the list of observers was compiled in violation of electoral legislation.

As a result, on the first day of voting, Precinct Election Commissions in the territories of  territorial electoral commissions No. 46 and 47 of the Krasnoselsky District massively rejected observers’ referrals and banned their operations, arguing that the observers were not in the lists transferred to the polling stations by  territorial electoral commission. According to candidates Dmitry Gagarin, Pavel Lyubimov and Olga Novitskaya (candidates at the Yuzhno-Primorsky Municipal District ( territorial electoral commissionNo. 47)), 50 observers were not allowed to monitor in the district. Candidates Sergei Androsyuk, Nikolay Bylinin, Andrey Balatsky, Natalia Lisyanskaya, Konstantin Nesterov, and Natalia Gorskaya were denied their 62 observers to enter the Sosnovaya Polyana Municipal District ( territorial electoral commissionNo. 46).

Observers associated with the “Central District for a Comfortable Living Environment” initiative group were not allowed to enter polling stations in the Central District of St. Petersburg, as reported by Yaroslav Kostrov, a former candidate and local activist. The reason was that decisions on appointing observers were allegedly not attached to the lists, although the candidates keep claiming that all decisions were submitted. According to Bumaga (media outlet), observers of Vladimir Leontyev, a municipal candidate in the Zvezdnoye Municipal District, were also not allowed to enter polling stations, although the election commission had had no questions about the list of observers earlier.

In this regard, we highlight that election commissions often do not make any stand-alone written decisions (at least, we could not find any decisions of the kind on election commissions' websites) that would report violations committed by candidates and parties when compiling and submitting their lists of observers. As a result, such “oral” denial of access to observers is completely arbitrary, not supported by any references to the relevant provisions of the law, which have been violated and which cannot be challenged in court. We believe that any statement by an election commission that a candidate or party has committed a violation of electoral legislation or instructions established by commissions should be accompanied by the adoption of appropriate decisions by these election commissions.

Amendments to the electoral legislation have also contributed to creating additional challenges for observation: according to the amendments, each election commission now sets the form of the list of observers independently. This means that different regions have different rules for processing documents. First, the volume of data submitted to the Commission by observers has increased. Secondly, the form of the document and the method of its submission are now regulated by local regulations: this even applies to the font that must be used when filling out the form electronically. For example, it is already known that Times New Roman is mandatory in Moscow, while commissions in the Sverdlovsk Region require Liberation Serif.

Another legislative change entitles election commissions to reject lists of observers submitted by candidates and parties not affiliated with the authorities.

Observers from the New People party and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation were not allowed to enter polling stations in the Bezhetsky and Dyatkovsky districts of Bryansk Oblast, as well as in the Fominsky and Volodarsky districts of Bryansk, on the grounds that the parties allegedly had not submitted the necessary data, and the lists submitted had not been made in accordance with the required template, and the election commissions had not forwarded the lists to polling stations.

Excessive requirements to observer referral forms (templates of the documents on the observers sent to polling stations) may disrupt the observation campaign in an entire region. For example, according to journalist Alexey Seregin, the regional leadership of the New People party removed all its observers (about 200 people) from the elections in the Republic of Mari El allegedly due to a legal error in paperwork. The exact paperwork error was not specified. It should be noted that this was not the first time when this party recalled its election observers. 

In St. Petersburg, not only observers, but even candidates were removed from polling stations. For example, at PEC No. 1200, the chairman of the precinct commission did not allow two registered candidates — Grigory Kurnosov and Victoria Shishigina — to be at the polling station, and he kicked them out of the polling station without any explanation, and he also threatened them with the police. Nadezhda Tikhonova, Head of the Regional Branch of “A Just Russia — For Truth” party in St. Petersburg, filed complaints with  territorial electoral commission No. 26 and the Chairman of the St. Petersburg Election Commission about these actions committed by the PEC Chairman.

Unlawful restrictions on observers

PEC members have been banning observers unlawfully to take photos and videos for many years. The Central Electoral Commission (CEC) has already provided many explanations on that, and many court decisions have been ruled on this issue. However, this practice continues.

For example, Yulia Troyno, Chairwoman of PEC No. 1119 in the city of Korolev (Moscow Oblast), told observers at the polling station that they had no right to take photos and videos, since this violated the secrecy of voting. A copy of the decision to ban filming was not issued, as this was an “oral decision” by the commission. Observers were threatened with being removed from the polling station. The same restrictions on the movement of observers in the voting premises were introduced at PEC No. 361 in Dolgoprudny (Moscow Oblast), where observers were not allowed to approach the desks of commission members during the distribution of ballots to voters.

By law, an observer may move around the polling station and monitor all operations of the precinct commission.

PEC chairman E.A. Uryvayeva in the village of Khrushchevka (Lipetsk Oblast) restricted the candidate's observer from moving around the polling station and forbade to review the voter lists. An attempt was made to put pressure on the observer with the help of a police officer. 

According to the law, the commission must designate a place for observers so that they can freely exercise their observing functions (they must see ballot boxes, ballot issue desks and portable ballot boxes at least). However, there are many polling stations where observers cannot monitor voting procedures. For example, it had been the case at PEC No. 29 in Khabarovsk; a conflict between the observer and the chairman of the commission was settled there only after Mikhail Sidorov, Head of the Regional Branch of “A Just Russia — For Truth”, and Oyars Mashkov, Secretary of the Regional Election Commission, arrived at the polling station. Observers were offered a new dedicated place at the polling station.

Unreasonable restrictions were introduced on observers at a number of polling stations under the Kuntsevo  territorial electoral commissionin Moscow (e.g., at PECs No. 2609, 2628, etc.). A common observation practice widely used by all parties is when a candidate appoints two observers per polling station so that one observer monitors indoor voting in the polling station and the other observer monitors outdoor voting. However, PEC members suddenly said, referring to instructions from the  territorial electoral commission, that this was not possible, because, allegedly, an observer monitoring home voting would concurrently monitor the polling station premises by being there “virtually”. However, Paragraph 4 of Article 30 of Federal Law No. 67 states that “a candidate registered in the relevant single-mandate constituency may appoint no more than three observers to each precinct election commission, who are entitled to take turns observing VOTING PREMISES”, and the Law does not say that one of the observers may not join the commission members at home voting concurrently. 

Outdoor voting

Mass outdoor voting is another widely used questionable method for ensuring the desired election results. The introduction of REV has not actually affected the scale of outdoor voting. Observers recorded an unreasonably large number of applications for home voting in different regions, which amounted to dozens and sometimes hundreds of people.

At that, some commissions manage to home-visit all voters in record-breaking time. The electoral commissions in Moscow and St. Petersburg arranged a kind of competition to see who would spend the least time per voter during home voting: at PEC No. 2610 in the Kuntsevo District (Moscow), the electoral commission visited 34 voters in 2 hours 50 minutes, i.e. it spent only 5 minutes per person (at that, observers suspected ballot stuffing into a portable ballot box, and they were denied to get the copy of the relevant act); members of Moscow PEC No. 2595 spent only 2.5 minutes for 39 voters; PEC No. 1488 in St. Petersburg spent 2.5 minutes per person, and this PEC had not notified observers in advance, as the law says, about the commission members exiting the polling station with a portable ballot box for outdoor voting to satisfy 164 home voting requests; however, a new record was set by PEC No. 191 in St. Petersburg, which spent only 1 minute and 48 seconds per person on average (they visited 226 home-voters).

In addition, there are typical violations of the procedure for organizing and conducting home voting: when doing it, PEC members do not put appropriate markings in voter lists (PEC No. 2283 in St. Petersburg); PECs issue ballots to voters under unlawful IDs (members of PEC No. 442 of the Akademichesky District of St. Petersburg issued a ballot under a pension certificate); PECs do not notify observers in advance about exiting polling stations for home voting; PECs reject observers to join them for home voting referring to far-fetched pretexts; once outdoor voting is completed, PECs refuse to share copies of their outdoor voting acts with observers (e.g., PEC No. 2362 in Teply Stan (Moscow)), etc.

Other significant violations

In Chelyabinsk, local activists of A Just Russia and journalists found phantom houses in the voter lists at a number of polling stations in constituency No. 5. Some of the addresses assigned to these polling stations were houses demolished and resettled several years ago. Valery Gartung, Member of the State Duma, sent his requests about this to the election commission and to law enforcement agencies. 

Precinct commissions draw up acts (statements) on the corresponding safe bags with voter ballots once voting ends on the first day of elections. Observers are legally entitled to copies of these acts. However, there are commissions that do not share copies of the acts with observers. Thus, the chairman of PEC No. 2601 in Moscow told observers that “I do not issue any statements”, allegedly “there is no such right”, because “MCEC has banned” him to do so.

At PEC No. 2256 in the Central District of St. Petersburg, unknown persons, accompanied by the police, took out a pack of ballots and brought it to a nearby building.

Several reports suspected voting carousels in Moscow Oblast again: this territory is traditionally famous for leveraging this technology.

Artificial restrictions for observers, excessive data on early voting (e.g., in Kursk Oblast) and on outdoor voting, and a ban on sharing acts following the first voting day: these and other reports suggest that voting results may be falsified at the reported polling stations.