“Map of Violations”: Administrative resource works for electronic voting turnout

From January 17 to January 31, we have received 209 reports from 55 regions to the "Map of Violations" for the 2024 Russian presidential election. Since the page was opened on December 17, a total of 306 messages have been received.

Statistics

(one and the same report may contain signs of several types of violations):

• Abuse of administrative resources - 152;
• Violations during signature collection - 85;
• Violations of the rules of campaigning in mass media - 27;
• Pressure from superiors, coercion, bribery of voters - 26;
• Influence of law enforcement agencies - 6;
• Violation of the rules of printed and outdoor campaigning - 2;
• Illegal refusals to register, violations of candidate's rights - 1;
• Other violations - 45.

Regions from which the largest number of reports were received:

• Moscow and Lipetsk regions -23;
• Republic of Tatarstan - 16;
• Sverdlovsk and Ryazan regions - 8;
• Tambov Region, Republic of Karelia, Krasnoyarsk Territory - 7;
• Samara Region - 6.

Main trends

• The election campaign is gaining momentum. After the lull of the New Year holidays the administrative resources became more active, and the number of reports about coercion of state employees increased significantly.
• Most of the reports about pressure on voters come from the regions, where along with traditional voting they plan to conduct remote electronic voting (DEG). On January 29, pre-registration for voting via the Internet started, and the pressure on employees increased significantly. Similar information was received from more than a dozen regions. On February 1, the CEC reported that more than 500 thousand applications for registration for the DEG had already been received.
• In social networks, especially "Vkontakte", on the websites of state and municipal bodies and administrations of different levels continues to post a stream of messages with campaigning in favor of candidate Vladimir Putin. Often after information about such campaigning appears on the "Map of Violations" or in social networks, the messages are deleted.
• The fact that the police and law enforcement agencies are creating obstacles for Boris Nadezhdin's collectors of signatures was reported from several regions at once. The headquarters of the other candidates did not report such problems.

Top 5 violations

In the Novosibirsk Region, heads of housing and utilities institutions, directors of hospitals and schools, and managers of district municipal services in Novosibirsk were given brochures urging them to vote for Vladimir Putin in the upcoming presidential election. These brochures scare budgetary employees with reduced funding in case of low turnout and promise "stability without tightening the screws (meaning without repression)" if Putin wins the election. Special seminars "for public opinion leaders," were held by the city's district administrations with the Novosibirsk Region's Ministry of Regional Policy. According to the published information, the brochure was printed by the Volunteer Outpost non-profit fund for support of public initiatives with a circulation of 5,000 copies.

On January 29, the journalistic project "VotTak" published an investigation about how in the Pskov region employees of state institutions are forced to participate in collecting signatures in support of Vladimir Putin's nomination for the presidency of the Russian Federation. The investigation says about the involvement of the internal policy department of the Pskov region in the collection of signatures in favor of Vladimir Putin:

"At the disposal of "Vot Tak" appeared the technical task from the Department of internal policy of the Pskov region to the heads of subordinate institutions. In the document, they are asked to select signature collectors from government agencies ...

In the final table were 72 budgetary employees from 59 institutions of the Pskov region. Among them, for example, there is the MFC of Pskov, Velikolukskoye lesnichestvo, the Department of Roads of the Pskov region, the Pskov international airport "Princess Olga", the Center for assistance to children without parental care, as well as many hospitals and schools".

The article also reports about the involuntary collection of signatures among employees of budgetary institutions.

In Nizhny Novgorod region employees of employment centers were forced to register in remote electronic voting before the presidential election. And if they refused to do so, they were threatened with forfeiture of their bonuses.

"Beware Media" has at its disposal screenshots from a working chat room, where a user under the name "Evgenia Alexandrovna" informs employees throughout the region of the requirement to register in the DEG system by March 11. The application must be submitted through a chatbot. In the message is written instructions on how to do it. According to the employees of the NCPC, “Evgenia Alexandrovna” is the deputy director of the managing director of the Employment Center of the Nizhny Novgorod region Evgenia Alexandrovna Trefilova.

The Ministry of Internal Regional and Municipal Policy of the Nizhny Novgorod Region are tasked with controlling the registration of employees. And managers and heads of branches are asked to send a list of registered employees by the end of the week. "For refusal they threaten to deprive the employees of the bonus, it was verbally voiced," - said the employees of one of the branches.

Similar reports about the compulsion of budgetary employees to register in the DEG came from Yekaterinburg from employees of cultural institutions, students from Voronezh, employees of MFC Tomsk and other regions. Information about such pressure began to appear even more actively on January 29, after the start of registration for remote voting.

On January 23, in several cities of Siberia, the assemblers of candidate Boris Nadezhdin reported pressure from the police:

• In Irkutsk, signature collectors were demanded to vacate the premises. They had to open a collection point in another place.
• In Novosibirsk, people with guns and in uniform kicked out a collector of signatures for Boris Nadezhdin from a shopping center. According to a volunteer, the uniformed men told the collector that "you have to leave here, and they will report it to the police." A member of Nadezhdin's staff suggested that the uniformed men could have been employees of a private security organization, with patches on their sleeves resembling the chevron of the Rosgvardiya. The collection point for signatures for Putin, located in the same shopping center, had no problems.
• In Krasnoyarsk, a collector of signatures for Nadezhdin was kicked out of the shopping center by a policeman dressed in the uniform of a Rosgvardiya fighter. He threatened the activist named Daniel with detention, which forced the collection of signatures in the shopping center to be interrupted.

However, it was not only in Siberian cities that Nadezhdin's supporters had problems collecting signatures from law enforcers. On January 24, a collector was detained in Krasnodar's Krasnaya Ploshchad shopping center and taken to the police station.

In Moscow, meanwhile, they plan to hold a pre-election lottery to stimulate the DEG. During the presidential elections in the capital, the action "We choose together 2024" of the program "Million Prizes" will be held. It was decided to hold the main drawing among the participants of electronic voting. The prizes will be 5 thousand, 3 thousand and 1 thousand points. One point is equal to 1 ruble. They can be exchanged for goods and services of the program partners. The formal initiator of the lottery is the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Family electronic voting will also be stimulated in Moscow. Thus, additional prizes will be drawn among married couples who will vote online. There it will be possible to win up to 100 thousand points. From where the organizers of the lottery will take personal data on marital status, it is not specified.

The news about the election lottery in Moscow appeared simultaneously in more than 15 media outlets affiliated with the Moscow mayor's office.