New Legislation Aims To Block Opposition Candidates

The Russian authorities are expected to orchestrate a result in the upcoming State Duma elections that will give United Russia a clear majority of seats. This does not mean, however, that the manipulation of the electoral process by the authorities is complete. In a limited number of competitive districts, true opposition candidates including candidates who are associated with Aleksei Navalny have a real chance of winning if they are allowed to run. In recent weeks, steps have been taken to block these 'undesirable' candidates from participating.

The Russian authorities face several challenges in the upcoming elections. Polls, which tend to overstate support for the authorities due to preference falsification, suggest that fewer than thirty percent of Russians would vote for United Russia if the election were held today. The most obvious struggle will be to somehow convert the low popularity of the 'party of power' into something close to the current two-thirds majority needed to adopt changes to the constitution without support from other factions. As in previous elections, the authorities will likely rely on the use of administrative resources in the campaign and on large-scale irregularities including fraud to achieve this result.

Compared to the previous State Duma elections, a new challenge is presented by the Smart Voting campaign of Aleksei Navalny's movement. Smart Voting Calls on people to vote for one particular opposition candidate - even if that candidate is far from perfect - to prevent the opposition vote from becoming fragmented and, more importantly, to prevent the election of United Russia candidates in certain districts. Since 2018, Smart Voting has been successful in preventing the election of a large number of United Russia candidates in regional and municipal elections in cities such as Khabarovsk, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Tambov, and Tomsk.

The most prominent opposition politician who has expressed her intention to run and would have a good chance of winning in her Moscow district thanks to Smart Voting is Lyubov Sobol, who is perhaps the best known face of Navalny's movement after Navalny himself. The authorities are concerned about the prospect of Sobol and similar figures being represented in the Duma, where they would have a large platform to more directly speak truth to power. Legislation proposed on May 4th and passed in the first hearing on May 18th is quite obviously aimed at preventing just that. According to the new amendments, anyone who works for an organization that has been officially marked as 'extremist', or has worked for such an organization in recent years, gets stripped of their passive voting rights, i.e. the right to get elected. The proposal was announced just days after a ruling by the Moscow City Court that preemptively blocks the operation of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation and the network of regional organizations that bear his name pending a formal ruling on whether these organizations are 'extremist'.

Curiously, the new legislation has retroactive effect: those who have been leaders of an 'extremist' organization at some point in the three years before it was recognized as 'extremist', are barred from participating in elections as candidates for a duration of five years. Moreover, regular employees and anyone who has contributed to an extremist organization, for example by making a donation, within one year before the organization was recognized as 'extremist' are equally stripped of their passive voting rights, in this case for three years. The retroactive principle seems to be in clear violation of article 54 of the Russian constitution, which states: "No one may bear responsibility for the action that was not considered as a crime when it was committed." Against this claim, United Russia member of the State Duma committee on State Security and Corruption Control Anatoly Vyborny has argued that national security concerns override article 54. Lawmakers have indicated their intention that the legislation will already be effective in the upcoming elections. Second hearing is scheduled for May 25th.

In the space of a few months, Aleksei Navalny has been sentenced to several years in prison, many of his associates have been (often serially) prosecuted, his organizations have been branded as 'extremist', and it is likely that the people working for them as well as anyone who in the recent past has supported them financially or otherwise will be barred from becoming candidates in the election. Despite these challenges, Navalny's associates have vowed to continue the Smart Voting project. Now that the regional organizations have been suspended, however, it will be harder to organize the Smart Voting campaign in districts outside Moscow. It also seems likely that many candidates may actively reject a nomination by Smart Voting.

The branding of Navalny's movement as 'extremist' and the subsequent barring of Navalny associates from registering as candidates serves a clear purpose. It is widely assumed that the department within the presidential administration headed by Sergei Kirienko is in charge of the regime's election strategy. United Russia needs to win a large majority of districts in order to secure a 'constitutional majority' of at least three hundred seats. To achieve that goal, the presidential administration needs to micromanage the electoral process in a large number of the country's 225 election districts. The recent move to exclude true opposition candidates from a range of districts should make that job easier.

Some contours of the regime's strategy for the upcoming election, including the participation of more spoiler parties and the intention to hold voting over the course of several days, have been visible for some time. The rapid introduction of the recent legislation, however, suggests that the strategy remains a work in progress. More unforeseen twists and turns should be expected in the coming months.

Author: Max Bader (Leiden University)