Let me tell you how the campaign is going and, while I’m at it, ask for your help with one important thing. Over the past few days, you’ve probably read a ton of hellish articles about the legal technicalities of nomination and registration, the “municipal filter,” and all the rest of it. So let me explain it again in very simple terms. For my name to appear on the ballot in the mayoral election, I as a candidate have to get through two important stages: Nomination. There are two options here: self-nomination, after which you have to collect 70,000 signatures from Moscow residents. nomination by a registered party. In that case, no signatures are required. I went with the second option and was nominated by the PARNAS party (the Justice Ministry did not register the other ideologically similar parties, People’s Alliance and December 5).
http://youtu.be/jRh02r2zcNY The self-nomination option was never seriously considered, mainly because City Hall would guaranteedly throw me off the ballot over the signatures collected, finding some kind of “invalid” ones among them. They’ve perfected that technique. Sobyanin, meanwhile, is running precisely as a “self-nominated” candidate because he’s afraid of being tied too closely to his own party of “Crooks and Thieves,” and right now every district administration in the city is busy collecting signatures from state employees to stage this image of “broad popular support” for our shy apparatchik.
http://youtu.be/DgjlA7Doxfo They rounded up state-employed social workers, the bastards, and are still screeching about some “memorandum on fair elections.” 2. Registration. I only become a real, “final” candidate after registration, and registration is only possible if I get through the “municipal filter.” This is a device Putin and United Russia came up with so that, even though gubernatorial elections have formally been restored, candidates they fear or otherwise consider undesirable can still be kept out. In Moscow, the filter means that a candidate must obtain signatures from 110 municipal deputies in support. And not just 110 deputies, but 110 deputies from 110 different districts. And not just signatures from 110 deputies from 110 districts, but notarized signatures from 110 deputies from 110 districts. Each signature has to be notarized separately. The thing is, in the last Moscow municipal elections, Sobyanin’s City Hall blocked around 600 independent candidates from running. That is, they simply pushed them out of the race. As a result, municipal councils are overwhelmingly dominated by United Russia (they also ran as “self-nominated” candidates) and by people directly subordinate to City Hall, the prefectures, or district administrations: school principals, housing office employees, doctors from local clinics, employees of children’s cultural centers, and so on. In other words, these are often perfectly decent people, but they are completely dependent. They sign what they’re told to sign, and they vote the way they’re told to vote. In some districts, United Russia holds literally 100% of the seats. This is especially true in the districts of “New Moscow” — the part of Moscow Region that was recently annexed to Moscow. Here is an analysis of the makeup of municipal deputies by Gazeta.ru; it’s not entirely accurate, but the basic figures are correct. So the task facing every non–United Russia candidate is to identify deputies willing to sign for them, sort them by district, see how many are still missing, “trade” with other opposition candidates, and so on. It’s extremely complicated logistically, especially with the need for notarization and the holiday season. Here, Mitrokhin has an interesting post about how the process is going for him. This is what all the walls in our office have looked like for days now.
A few days ago, I spoke at the Forum of Municipal Deputies (thanks again to the organizers, Pyotr Miloserdov and Mikhail Velmakin). That was exactly where the question was discussed: how deputies can help ensure that as many independent candidates as possible make it onto the ballot. Because the goal of our “effective manager” is obvious: as few candidates as possible, as low turnout as possible, peace and quiet, sleepy elections, and a first-round victory thanks to the votes of state employees and government contractors. To prevent that, independent deputies and candidates made an informal pact: we help each other collect signatures because we want more candidates in the race. It’s worth noting the very constructive position of the Communist Party (KPRF) — they have more than 200 deputies from 86 districts, and they have already said they are ready to help other candidates in places where they have more than one deputy in a district. So what is my campaign headquarters doing about this? We created a “deputies’ штаб for collecting deputies’ signatures,” made up of Kostya Yankauskas, a deputy from Zyuzino; Alexei Beskorovainy from Kurkino; Vladimir Garnachuk from Troparevo-Nikulino; and Vera Kichanova from Yuzhnoye Tushino. As deputies themselves, they are helping me work with other deputies and collect their signatures. This is the kind of arrangement that, as some may remember, was proposed by Shchukino deputy Maxim Katz, who, incidentally, is also taking part in this effort. We created a convenient database of municipal deputies where they can easily be sorted by district, profession, and party affiliation, and we work with them individually — holding a billion meetings. Here it is; the media and other candidates are welcome to use it too — we don’t mind. Of course, I’m also using the opportunities City Hall is offering under its “equal access” framework: I will definitely attend the presidium of the “Council of Municipal Formations,” which brings together deputies loyal to the authorities. Thanks to Alexei Shaposhnikov for inviting me. And we’re doing a number of other things as well. The challenge? City Hall, in the form of that disgusting “Rakovа штаб,” has already activated an administrative team that is calling wavering deputies and politely informing them that “signing for Navalny would be a very bad decision.” And this is where I need your help. I want to counter those calls with calls from you: If you know a deputy from your municipal district, please call them and ask them to sign for Navalny. Be sure to report the results to us by email at navalny.moscow@gmail.com Don’t forget to include the deputy’s contact details. If you simply know the contact information of any Moscow deputies (it is practically impossible to obtain centrally; district administrations guard it like the apple of their eye), please send it to us at navalny.moscow@gmail.com We already have many contacts, but there are also many we don’t have. If you don’t know your deputy, that’s a great reason to get acquainted: go here, choose your district, and open the list of deputies. Pick up the phone and spend half an hour trying to reach a deputy and tell them that, as a resident of the district, you are asking them to sign for Navalny. Report the results to us at navalny.moscow@gmail.com If you do this, I’ll be enormously grateful. In our country, it’s somehow not at all common for a district resident to demand something from a deputy, but let’s start making it common. If — by some stroke of luck — you are yourself a deputy and are ready to sign in support of my nomination, then write to navalny.moscow@gmail.com as soon as possible. In short, we are firmly determined to do everything possible (within the law — the idea of kidnapping deputies was discarded after brief consideration) to get through the “municipal filter,” despite the gleeful grunting from City Hall: we control everything here.
Please help us: you don’t want to open the ballot and see only United Russia’s candidate, S. S. Sobyanin, smiling sweetly at the thought of the two-trillion-ruble Moscow budget. Naturally, I’d be grateful if you shared this post — the more people read it, the more deputies we can reach. This is our city.