This is really awesome, and thank you all so much.
I’m very proud to report on the results of the campaign’s first two weeks.
As you remember, our top priority is to secure official registration. To do that, when the time comes, we will need to collect 350,000 signatures (300,000 plus a reserve) in a very short period of time, certify them, bind them into folders, and submit them.
That’s why, before the campaign officially begins, we are collecting the contact details of 500,000 people—those who will be ready to give their signature at the first sound of the pioneer bugle (a Soviet-era youth movement reference, meaning an immediate call to action).
A total of 79,953 people have given us their email addresses for this purpose. As of 12:00, 56,171 people have completed the full registration process.
That is the figure we are counting as final. In other words, we have completed 11% of the plan. We’re happy with the pace. Here are the charts:
a) hourly, by day b) cumulative signatures
Important: Confirm your email address. If you entered your email address and even subscribed to campaign updates, we are not allowed to send you mailings until your email has been confirmed twice—this is a way to protect internet users from spam. Be sure to click the link in the automated email you receive after registering:
Without that click, we have no right to use your email as a means of contact. That email is always sent—if you don’t see it in your inbox, check your spam folder; automated messages sometimes end up there because of email service errors.
At the very beginning, we had some issues with SMS confirmation, but now the SMS delivery rate is 98%.
If you want to sign in support of my nomination, you can do so directly through this form. The minimum target here is set at 300,000 signatures.
— 14,286 people across the country want to become campaign volunteers and have signed up with us. So even after just the first two weeks, it is already clear that this will be the largest volunteer-driven election campaign in Russia’s modern history.
Join us—you’ll have something to remember later. You can sign up as a volunteer here.
Already 5,201 people have decided to fund our campaign and have contributed 8.29 million rubles (about 8.29 million RUB)!
Breakdown by payment system:
Yandex.Money + bank cards — 4.34 million rubles PayPal — 1.95 million rubles Direct large donations — 0.8 million rubles Bitcoins — 22.2 (at today’s exchange rate, that is 1.2 million rubles)
Let me immediately answer two common questions:
1) Is all of this definitely legal?
Absolutely, 100% legal.
Our campaign fundraising fully complies with the law. An election campaign officially begins no earlier than 100 days and no later than 90 days before the election. Most likely, in early December 2017 (Clause 2, Article 5 of Federal Law No. 19-FZ of January 10, 2003, “On the Election of the President of the Russian Federation”), after the election campaign begins, it will be necessary to open a special election account (Article 58), and transfers to it are strictly regulated.
Before the election campaign officially begins, we are not required to comply with any of the formalities of election law. The money is transferred for a designated purpose to the accounts of campaign manager Leonid Volkov and spent on preparations for the election campaign.
And transferring bitcoins is definitely, definitely legal?
Definitely, 100%.
There are no restrictions in the law on the use of bitcoins. Moreover, in a recent letter, the tax service explicitly authorized their use (Federal Tax Service letter dated October 3, 2016, No. OA-18-17/1027, “On monitoring the circulation of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoins, in the territory of the Russian Federation”). They will only become unusable after the election campaign officially begins.
If you want to become the campaign’s 5,202nd donor, we’ll be very glad to see you here.
I’m very glad to be part of this huge machine—a movement of people united to achieve real elections.
Thank you, everyone—let’s keep working.
You can help right now by sharing this image on your social media, posting a link to https://2018.navalny.com/, and writing that you are giving your signature and urging everyone else to do the same.