Local elections: fair or dull

By Vestnik Kavakaza

Last Sunday Russia held the united voting day. 30 constituents of the federation elected heads of regions and members of legislative power bodies. There were no big rows or serious violations of the law in the elections, and many people called them “dull.” Experts note that the process of voting was held without implementation of administrative resources, very transparently and openly. However, voters turnout in almost all regions was very low.

There are different points of view on the reasons that prevented voters from going to ballot stations. First of all, it is the first half of September, and many citizens are on vacation or prefer to spend weekends in the countryside.

Meanwhile, according to Valery Fyodorov, the Director General of the VCIOM, the low turnout is connected with the fact that Russian policies have reoriented from an internal to an external course recently, and the regional and local elections don’t cause much interest all over the country.

The Mayor of Moscow Sergey Sobyanin, commenting on the elections to the Moscow City Duma, stated that the majority of Muscovites are apolitical, just like residents of megacities all over the world, and low voter turnout is a natural phenomenon. Moreover, according to him, such a level of turnout proves that “nobody increased it artificially, it is real.”

Vladimir Isakov, the head of the Legal Theory and Comparative Law Department, thinks that “one of most important factors that influenced the voter turnout was the low level of trust in the representatives of democracy and its poor image among voters. The parliament takes one of the last places in the rating of trustworthy organizations, unfortunately.”

Isakov thinks citizens don’t trust legislative bodies because every election is held in Russia according to new rules: “This is the instability of electoral laws. Despite the opinions of voters, they try to find a system that can guarantee victory. The whole world experience shows that there is no such system. But in Russia we tried to find a system at the level of the State Duma and the Federation Council, unfortunately. The procedure of elections to the Federation Council is deadlocked. Representatives of representatives work there, even though this is a structure that decides on questions of peace and war. And the image of the Federation Council is worse than the State Duma’s,” the expert says.

Another negative factor, according to Vladimir Isakov, is turning the elections to party lists: “People lost an opportunity to influence the composition of the State Duma. I think this was a mistake. Elections should be held under simple, understandable, and stable rules. That’s when people will start trusting the parliament again.”

At the same time, the political scientist admits that, in comparison with previous elections, the voting was calm, transparent and without rows. “Of course there were pre-electoral violations during the election campaign; not all candidates had equal access to the mass media. But it stayed behind the scenes. At least administrative resources were not implemented in the elections openly. And this is good,” Vladimir Isakov stressed.