Yesterday, during a broadcast, I was asked whether Smart Voting would still work under Ella Pamfilova’s three-day voting scheme.
I answered confidently that there would be no three-day voting in the September elections. The elections have already been announced; in most regions, signature collection has already wrapped up. Candidates are submitting them and waiting for registration decisions. Some have already been registered.
Yes, there is an amendment expanding the powers of the Central Election Commission, but it is obvious that the decision on the voting format is made when the election is officially called.
Otherwise, we are dealing with a classic case of retroactive application of the law. A candidate submitted documents under one set of voting rules, but voters will choose under another.
And then this morning I open the news and see the gleeful face of the chief witch:
Three-day voting will already be used in September.
You can argue about whether the decision to impose such rushed and obviously unlawful measures was influenced by the fact that so many people agreed to treat that seven-day voting garbage as a real election and went to the polls. I think it was, though some will disagree.
What there is no doubt about is that this is, for the most part, a panicked reaction to the threat posed by Smart Voting.
That follows directly from the Central Election Commission’s own decision. There are many election campaigns underway, but they are introducing the three-day format only where we are running Smart Voting: State Duma by-elections; gubernatorial races; elections to regional legislative assemblies; and city council elections in regional capitals.
Putin and Pamfilova did the basic math and realized that if you and I pull 15% of voters into Smart Voting, we will beat United Russia everywhere. So they are preparing to rig things even “better.”
So what should we be thinking and doing?
The main victims, of course, are the “systemic opposition” — the officially tolerated opposition parties in Russia. They are completely finished now. Candidates from the Communist Party, A Just Russia, and the Liberal Democratic Party become the easiest prey for local United Russia officials who control the commissions. Clearly, this violates the broader “pact” between the Kremlin and the systemic opposition.
They used to reward your loyalty to the system with a cozy parliamentary seat — but now what? They can promise you anything, but at the local level they will take it all away if taking it becomes much easier.
We will see whether the systemic opposition makes any attempt to overturn the three-day voting decision. I cannot imagine what they could have been promised in return. For now, they seem to be in a state of mild shock, at least at the leadership level.
The September battle for the regions will be even harder than expected.
We are not changing our plans. Volkov is right when he writes that what awaits us in September still makes sense, unlike the July 1 “vote”:
That is the key difference. In September, there is something worth fighting for — parliamentary seats that can be taken away from United Russia — and there are people to do the fighting: candidates and their teams. In other words, there are political actors here with interests of their own.
If they are introducing three-day voting, then we need to bring not 15% but 20% of voters into Smart Voting. We need even more election observers and much more work to coordinate them.
Whatever new rules the Central Election Commission may introduce, let us ask ourselves this: will residents of cities like Novosibirsk and Tomsk really believe that United Russia won in every district? Of course not. What they do if someone tries to cheat them will depend on us — on how convincingly we prove the fraud.
It is quite possible that in September we will see the last voting procedure that can still, however loosely, be called an “election.” Or perhaps not even that. The only way to find out is to join the fight and do everything possible to win.
So register with Smart Voting right now. You can also sign up there to be an election observer. Bring in your relatives and friends as well.
And if elections are effectively abolished, there can be only one response: the streets and protests. There is no other path. Otherwise, the process becomes completely irreversible, and any possibility of participating in “legal politics” will be fully banned.