Congratulations to everyone. I feel like walking around Moscow and kissing everybody. Especially the residents of Golyanovo.
This was the first experience of large-scale, complex collective action coming specifically from voters themselves. From the bottom up.
"Smart Voting" originally grew out of the understanding that the opposition would never truly unite. There are different kinds of people within the systemic opposition, but they will never be allowed to act collectively with other election participants. So the only option is to force that unity from below, on the basis of the most honest approach possible.
When the idea first came to me (it did last year, while I was serving 50 days under administrative arrest), and then when Smart Voting was discussed, it became clear that it was only possible under two conditions: - absolutely no rigging in the selection of candidates. Mistakes can happen and do happen, but there was no cheating. - a lot of work. A huge amount of work. An insane amount of work.
To be honest, we're barely alive here: from the investigations team and video production crew, who were cranking out one investigation a day, to the designers, lawyers, and the guys from Navalny LIVE. I won't even start on the IT people. I'm not entirely sure they survived — they still haven't replied to messages.
But there are results to show for it:
Khabarovsk: a total rout of United Russia, both in the city and across the region:
Irkutsk: a total rout of United Russia in the city:
Clearly, hundreds of municipal deputies were elected in St. Petersburg with Smart Voting's support, but things there are an absolute disaster. Some precincts still haven't been counted. The scale of the fraud is on a par with Bashkortostan.
Novosibirsk: a strong showing by Sergei Boyko. If he had been the unified candidate, he would have won. As it is, he has secured the status of Siberia's leading opposition figure.
There were many other elections too, and we'll be digging through the results for a long time yet and writing to you about them.
And then there's Moscow, of course. Eighty percent of Smart Voting's efforts were focused on Moscow, and here, guys, we really did beat United Russia.
They had oceans of money, the media, they got candidates removed, people arrested, rallies banned — and we still won.
Yesterday, around 10 p.m., it became clear that 24 Smart Voting candidates plus Yuneman would become deputies.
At 10:30 p.m., it became clear that Sobyanin had given the order to falsify the results, and the uploading of precinct protocols into the State Automated Election System stopped. They tried to steal 8 seats from candidates who had won by narrow margins. By 5 a.m., they had managed to steal 5:
Klim Likhachyov (Danilovsky, Donskoy, Nagatino-Sadovniki, Nagatinsky Zaton). They simply stuffed ballots against him at one precinct:
Roman Yuneman (Chertanovo Central, Chertanovo South). Yuneman was not a Smart Voting candidate (more on that below). Even so, he came in first, but his victory was stolen by an openly and cynically organized ballot dump called "electronic voting." Its promotion was actively handled by Alexei Alexeyevich Venediktov, and I'm sure we all want to hear his comments. Electronic voting was used in three districts, and the pattern was the same everywhere: United Russia candidates got a fantastical, inexplicable advantage there. For Yuneman and Ulyanchenko, it proved decisive.
Ivan Ulyanchenko (Zelenograd: Kryukovo, Matushkino, Savelki, Silino, Staroye Kryukovo). See above. A completely stolen victory.
Sergei Kurgansky (Kotlovka, Obruchevsky, Cheryomushki). The most frustrating story of all. Toward morning, Sobyanin and Gorbunov organized ballot stuffing against him, and Kurgansky lost to United Russia's Sharapova by 26 votes.
At this point, those who were too lazy to go vote should be ashamed — and especially those who urged people to engage in the idiocy of spoiling ballots. Look: Kurgansky was short by 27 votes, and nearly a thousand ballots were spoiled:
So United Russia's Sharapova can be considered Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky's personal deputy. Out of jealousy and envy, he spent the last three weeks pointlessly sabotaging Smart Voting. He came up with this idea of "voting your conscience," which looked completely absurd given his recent support for Sobchak (how "conscience" and "Sobchak" coexist in his head, I have no idea). So apparently people were supposed to spoil their ballots and write "down with autocracy" on them. He didn't persuade many people — the idea was stupid and fringe — but a couple hundred were enough. One more United Russia deputy. Great job fighting autocracy.
Khodorkovsky's "deputies" also include the unhinged deputy Stebenkova. Only a small number of ballots were stuffed for her in Maryino, but it was enough to keep Andrei Orel (Pechatniki, part of Maryino) from winning a seat.
I hope that after this disgrace, Mikhail Borisovich retreats for a while to some Devonshire bog or the heather fields of Scotland, spends some time in solitude, makes peace with himself, and returns once again as someone capable of acting sensibly.
At the very least, we must all demand the annulment of the electronic voting results and the restoration of Yuneman's and Ulyanchenko's rightful victories.
Even so, the current result still looks fantastic. After all, this is what things used to be like:
In the entire history of the Moscow City Duma, there has never been anything close to this many non-approved candidates. This is a very big victory.
The goals we set were: - to undermine United Russia's monopoly;
- to get deputies elected by us;
Those goals were achieved, and there were pleasant bonuses too in the form of Metelsky and Kasamara — the most prominent and widely mentioned United Russia figures.
City Hall was ready to tear anyone's throat out for them, and we took them down through Smart Voting.
It's a shame we didn't manage to take down penthouse owner Alexei Shaposhnikov as well. We failed to account for one important thing here. Shaposhnikov put up a spoiler lookalike with the same surname as his rival Yefimov. And we didn't emphasize to Smart Voting supporters that they needed to choose the right Yefimov.
As a result, the fake Yefimov got a lot of votes thanks to Smart Voting — 7%. The real one got 38%. Shaposhnikov got 41%. So in reality, Yefimov beat the chairman of the Moscow City Duma — it was just fraud that intervened.
And the most absurd and comical Smart Voting triumph was deputy Alexander Solovyov.
There is a certain Sabina Tsvetkova — a United Russia candidate very dear to City Hall. Some say especially to Liksutov, though I can't confirm that. Running against her was independent candidate Alexander Solovyov.
To help the utterly useless Tsvetkova get elected, they first registered a spoiler Solovyov in her district — also named Alexander Solovyov. Then they removed (and jailed) the real Solovyov. And the Communist Party candidate, Timur Abushaev, was also arbitrarily removed there.
So who were we supposed to support through Smart Voting? They were all technical candidates. The real Solovyov himself suggested: to hell with it, support the fake Solovyov. Just so Tsvetkova doesn't get elected. On principle.
So, in short, the fake Solovyov is now a deputy. No one has even seen him in a photo :)
Well, who knows — maybe he'll turn out to be a good deputy. In any case, the district's voters gave Sobyanin a solid slap on the nose for illegally removing Solovyov and Abushaev.
About Yuneman.
Roman Yuneman ran in District 30 (Chertanovo Central, Chertanovo South). Smart Voting supported not him, but Vladislav Zhukovsky of the Communist Party. There was a lot of debate about this, and critics of Smart Voting cite the situation as an example that we did not choose every candidate with 100% fairness. They say it was supposedly my personal preference.
Yuneman got 28.3%, Zhukovsky 24.8%. This is the only case out of 45 where the Smart Voting candidate finished neither first nor second.
In hindsight, you realize we should have spent more time on this and tried to resolve it more cleverly, but I can honestly say: Smart Voting could not have endorsed Yuneman.
I fully acknowledge that there is a built-in flaw in the system here. We predict the future by looking at the past. And Yuneman wasn't in the past.
In 95% of cases, Smart Voting backs the candidate whose party came in second there last time. There are exceptions for districts where the frontrunner was removed from the ballot (in District 37, Smart Voting backed Gubenko, whom Rusakova pointed to; in District 45, Yandiyev, whom Yashin pointed to; and so on).
In District 30, the Communist Party took second place in the previous election, so from the very beginning it was clear that we would support the Communist Party there. Zhukovsky meant Zhukovsky. If it had been someone else, we would have supported someone else.
This tactic allowed us to make the right choice almost everywhere. The result was a balanced list. Yabloko won 4 seats — it will now form its largest faction in history. Three A Just Russia candidates were elected. But life is complex and varied; you can't fit everything under a single rule.
As for opinion polls, every candidate kept waving them in our faces nonstop — it was impossible to study them seriously. Everyone was always in first place.
One district, two young and very active candidates. I certainly find Zhukovsky more appealing — he directly criticizes City Hall and United Russia, while Yuneman takes a cautious position and does not criticize Sobyanin (though he obviously ran the better campaign). But he got into Smart Voting not because of my personal preference, but because of the general rule.
Everyone talks about Yuneman, but there is an even more frustrating situation with Potapov in District 13 (Babushkinsky, Losinoostrovsky, Yaroslavsky). This is where we made an exception. Potapov seemed elderly and inactive in the campaign, so we backed the energetic young Lifantsev. In the end, the gap between them was 60 votes. Potapov got that much without Smart Voting, and with Smart Voting he almost certainly would have won.
If the Yuneman case reflects an original flaw in the system, then with Potapov we lost a seat because of my wrong decision. I deeply regret it and apologize to everyone, but the matter is simple: someone has to take responsibility for the final choice of name. We did everything honestly, but as the saying goes, if you knew the cards in advance, you'd be living in Sochi. Mistakes are possible. We had 2 out of 45.
There are also successful cases of departing from the general rule.
We spent a long time calculating and reviewing things, and then backed Timonov (A Just Russia) instead of Andreyeva (Communist Party) in District 16 (Bogorodskoye, Preobrazhenskoye, part of Sokolinaya Gora). Andreyeva was also hammering us with opinion polls, and local activists were showering us with curses. Nevertheless, the decision was absolutely the right one — Timonov won confidently and will be an excellent deputy.
In short, there is plenty to think about in terms of improving the system. To me, primaries would be the simplest solution, but in our reality that is impossible — they simply removed all the strongest candidates. They would remove the primary winners too.
Both Leonid Volkov and I will be writing much more about the results. They are very interesting.
But the main thing is victory. Twenty seats in Moscow, municipal deputies in St. Petersburg, Khabarovsk, and Irkutsk — this is a real victory for a first experiment in collective action and for Smart Voting.
Huge thanks to everyone who believed in this and supported it.
Thank you to everyone who registered in the system — you became the core without which none of this would have worked.
Thank you to all the unregistered candidates. In fact, all of this was done for you, and the fact that it worked for others is to your credit.
Thank you to everyone who went to the rallies and turned these boring elections into real politics.
Thank you to everyone who, while unlawfully imprisoned, has not lost courage — you give us inspiration and anger. This Smart Voting success is dedicated to you; we tried very hard to elect deputies who will stand up for you.
It's great to do something together, isn't it? Register with Smart Voting.