Communist Party Disputes Russian Election Results
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) wants to annul the results of Russia’s December 2007 Parliamentary elections. As the Vedomosti newspaper reported on May 20th, the party has decided to take their case against Russia’s Central Electoral Commission to the Supreme Court within the next week.
According to the party’s data, the pro-Kremlin United Russia party received around 200 thousand votes illegally during the election. Vadim Solovyev, a party legal expert, said this was 10 times the number of votes stolen during the 2003 election, when the Communists also attempted to contest the results.
According to electoral law, the court may annul voting results issued by the Central Electoral Commission if violations are found in certain election procedures. These include problems with forming voter lists, vote counting, and other breaches of the law that contradict the true will of the electorate.
As result, the KPRF is filing a lawsuit consisting of five parts. To start, they charge that media coverage was skewed, as their research found that United Russia received 70% of all television airtime. Further, they add that campaigning laws were broken in favor of United Russia, and that voters were given false information.
Finally, the largest part of the suit deals with discrepancies in voting figures between records given to electoral observers and official vote counts, as well as complaints against electoral officials. The Communists will present evidence of fraud in 26 regions. By their data, votes were added to the tickets of United Russia, as well the other major parties, including Just Russia, LDPR, and even Yabloko in certain regions.
At just one polling station in the Moscow oblast, the KPRF found that 1225 votes were thrown in for United Russia.
Meanwhile, the Central Electoral Commission sees the move by the Communists as an “empty bother.” Gennady Raikov, a member of the Commission told Vedomosti that the agency had already examined all complaints about the election, and has found that they did not significantly effect the results. Still, the KPRF has pledged to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights if their Supreme Court effort is rebuffed.
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