Election update VI. Results of presidential elections 2024 candidates registration

Golos, the Movement in defense of voters' rights, has published an analytical report (in Russian) summing up the results of candidates' nomination and registration during the Russian presidential election campaign 2024.

Experts refer to the current election campaign as unique. First, these are going to be the first federal elections during the ongoing war in Ukraine. Second, there is more censorship and pressure on Russian citizens than ever before in the history of modern Russia. Third, despite predictable results and an extremely low number of registered candidates like in 2008, the current campaign has already sprung a number of surprises. The main ones being the support shown for the anti-war candidates Ekaterina Duntsova and Boris Nadezhdin.

Golos experts consider this to be a sign of public awakening; its scale could be properly assessed after the three-day voting in March.

GENERAL STATISTICS ON THE NOMINATION OF CANDIDATES

According to the Russian Central Election Commission (CEC), 33 persons have submitted notifications expressing their will to nominate as candidates: nine of them planned to be nominated by parties and 24 went for self-nomination. However, only 15 candidates – nine party nominees and six self-nominees – have officially submitted the necessary nomination documents to the CEC. Thus, 18 self-nominated candidates (we don’t know the names of most of them) dropped out already at phase zero.

Of the 15 candidates who submitted nomination documents, 11 (eight party nominees and three self-nominees) passed the first stage (registration of authorized representatives and permission to open an electoral bank account). Thus, the dropout rate at this stage amounted to 4 persons or 27%.

However, only four names remained on the final ballot. Representatives of three parliamentary parties – LDPR, CPRF, and the New People – have stayed on the list. The United Russia and the Just Russia did not nominate party candidates and supported Putin's nomination. The fourth registered candidate was incumbent president Putin (self-nominated). Thus, the final candidate dropout rate amounted to 88%.

KEY OBSERVATIONS

1. The signatures collection took place under conditions of administrative pressure, financial and informational inequality of candidates. The monitoring project “Map of violations” by Golos kept track of numerous violations of electoral legislation (detailed information is available in the annex to the report in Google document, in Russian). Thus, if we take for granted the information of Vladimir Putin's campaign office about 3 million signatures being collected in support of his nomination, the “price” of one signature in Putin’s favor is a hundredth of such in Boris Nadezhdin’s support. This can be explained by the abuse of administrative resources by government officials at various levels and corner-cutting in terms of campaign financing. The human and financial resources of the United Russia party and the so-called “National Front” movement were used to collect signatures in support of Putin: signatures were collected by “volunteers”, and many activities related to the collection, processing, and transportation of signatures were not paid for from the candidate's campaign office. A huge inequality in media coverage of the candidates' activities also played a major role: at the end of January, the statistics showed that Vladimir Putin had 3,362 (!) times more airtime (in minutes) on federal TV channels than Boris Nadezhdin.

2. There will be as few candidates on the ballot as in 2008 – an anti-record again. This is less than in all other presidential campaigns in Russian history. There has also been a decrease in the number of those willing to run for office. The trend observed by Golos during the regional and local elections on the unified day of voting in 2023 remains. Participation in the elections under the current conditions is a serious threat to politicians – even to those considered “approved” by the presidential administration. At the same time, some candidates openly simulated their participation in the election campaign at this stage. In particular, the collection of signatures for candidates Sergei Baburin and Sergei Malinkovich looked like a simulation, while Andrei Bogdanov, Anatoly Batashov, Rada Russkikh and Irina Sviridova presumably did not collect signatures at all. For example, the number of signatures submitted to the CEC by ecologist Anatoly Batashov and Instagram-blogger Rada Russkikh was lower than the number of their nomination meetings attendees.

3. The candidates’ dropout rate at the registration stage was the highest compared to previous campaigns. This is mostly due to the procedure of voter signatures verification, which provides massive opportunities for arbitrary actions for the authorities in charge. The main work on signature verification is conducted not by CEC representatives, but by anonymous experts from the Ministry of Internal Affairs using a classified handwriting methodology that is inaccessible to election lawyers and observers. Monitoring results collected by Golos for many years prove that the current system of signature verification does not align with legal criteria. In general, the CEC's conclusion about more than 9,000 invalid signatures submitted in favor of Boris Nadezhdin looks inconsistent. However, the candidate failed to prove it in court.

The core part of the report by Golos is dedicated to the process of collecting and verifying signatures in favor of the candidates.

4. Excessive legal requirements for the nomination procedure remain unchanged in the 2024 presidential election. Article 18 of the Russian Constitution states: “Human and civil rights and freedoms shall have direct force. They shall determine the meaning, content and implementation of laws, the functioning of legislative and executive authority and of local self-government, and shall be guaranteed by law”. According to Golos experts, the interpretation of civil electoral rights by the Russian authorities contradicts constitutional principles and leads to significant restrictions on the passive electoral rights of Russians and artificially reduces competition in the presidential elections. Golos experts made similar conclusions in a report on the nomination of candidates in the 2018 presidential election.

5. The current election campaign has once again highlighted the crisis of the existing party system in Russia. Out of 25 existing political parties, only eight (32%) tried to take part in the elections; and at the end of the day, representatives of only three parties (12%) remained in the presidential race.