Municipal elections are in full swing in Moscow. Today, Pyotr Miloserdov vojk told me how interesting things are there. Miloserdov is a registered candidate in the Voykovsky District. It is a five-seat constituency. In other words, the five people who receive the most votes will become deputies. Seven people are competing for the five seats. Five from United Russia. Two from the Communists. "And where are the others?" you may ask. "Where are the other contenders? Usually plenty of people want to become municipal deputies!" There were others. Eight more, in fact. But all of them were thrown out of the race. How? Like this. To register and take part in the election, you must: collect signatures pay an electoral deposit be nominated by a party that has a faction in the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament). Accordingly, all independents—and they make up the overwhelming majority in municipal elections (the usual apartment-building and neighborhood activists)—pay the deposit. Even though only a minimal number of signatures is required (usually 50–60), trying to register that way is hopeless: they’ll find fault with some tiny correction on the forms and strike you off. So if you pay the deposit, it is not so easy to deny you registration. Sometimes election commissions even go so far as to give undesirable candidates the wrong bank details for the account where the deposit is supposed to be transferred. Then they refuse to register them on those grounds, saying, well, you got the numbers wrong. But that was all before the era of historical materialism, when they still had to invent tricks. Now everything is simpler. Apparently, after seeing 99.99% turnout in Chechnya, Moscow’s commissions thought, "Why should we be any worse?" So then: Eight independent candidates for the municipal assembly of the Voykovsky District pay the deposit. And they bring the relevant paperwork to a meeting of the election commission, demanding that the commission register them and allow them to take part in the election. What follows is a dialogue between the chair of the election commission and candidate Zakondyrin (who is, incidentally, a sitting deputy and an aide to Lebedev—the banker): Chair: We have reviewed your documents, and they contain serious violations. The receipt for the deposit payment does not state that you are a citizen of the Russian Federation. Zakondyrin: You are mistaken. The receipt contains my full passport details. It is obvious that this is a passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation. Chair: Nothing of the sort. In the opinion of our commission, a passport is not a document confirming Russian citizenship. Curtain. And so, on the same grounds, eight independent candidates for the municipal assembly of the Voykovsky District were denied registration. There is an audio recording of the dialogue quoted above. That’s how it is. I suggest everyone draw their own conclusions about the possibility of taking part in the procedure that, for some reason, is still called an "election."