Golos appeals to Pamfilova and Gref over problems with opening candidate accounts

Text of appeal

From the Council of the Golos movement to the chairwoman of the Central Election Commission of Russia Ella Pamfilova and the chairman of Sberbank board German Gref in connection to existing problems regardng the opening of special accounts for the candidates

Dear Ella Alexandrovna! Dear German Oskarovich!

We keep a close eye on the significant efforts that are being made by the Central Election Commission of Russia and Sberbank to modernize technological processes, so as to make the use of your services more accessible and comfortable for the people. This concerns both the implementation of digital technologies in the work of election commissions and the achievements made in this area by the banking industry.

At the same time, we’ve been receiving — from all over the country — the messages from the candidates in the upcoming elections and their campaign staff, detailing the problems with opening of special accounts for the candidates in the local Sberbank branches. From the information that we have, some candidates in the town of Biysk, in the Altai Region, had to wait for almost two days to open their accounts, while at Kamchatka the wait was up to five days. We’ve had reports about problems from other regions as well. The candidate for the head of the Republic of Buryatiya Vyacheslav Markhaev publicly announced that he couldn’t open his account in time, and had to begin the collection of municipal deputies’ signatures a day late, because some software in the bank’s computers was “frozen.” We’ve interviewed election candidates and their campaign staffers, and they stress that this is an old problem, which repeats itself from one election to the next. In particular, they note the lack of specialist training in the bank’s branches, tasked with opening candidate accounts, inconvenient software, which is badly adapted to the electoral campaign needs, and the communication problems between Sberbank branches and interregional centers.

The council of Golos movement would like to note that such situation negatively affects reputation of the country’s largest bank, AND violates the rights of the candidates, because in the context of short-term electoral campaign each “missed out” day may greatly influence the voting results: without the candidate account, it’s impossible to pay for the services of the campaign staff and campaign materials. Moreover, the money from the candidate account has to be used to pay for the signature collection lists — and the process of signature collection has an even tighter deadline. In this way, delays in opening candidate accounts may cause the authorities to refuse the candidate’s registration altogether.

We believe that the bank, which does so much to implement new technologies in the areas of management and customer service, can resolve the aforementioned problems. Unfortunately, such unjustified delays with candidate accounts give rise to suspicions that in some of the regions, the local election commissions and the bank’s branches failed to test the system’s operations prior to the start of the election campaign — or that such delays demonstrate someone’s malintent.

We entreat you to analyze the existing problems and take the necessary steps to prevent similar incidents prior to the start of subsequent election campaigns.

Members of the Golos movement for voter rights

Vitaly Averin

Stanislav Andreichuk

Andrei Buzin

Yuri Gurman

Vitaly Kovin

Arkady Lyubarev

Grigory Melkonyants

Alexei Petrov

Roman Udot