Minimum turnout in Russian presidential elections. Basic Research
The election campaign of Russian presidential candidates is in full swing. According to sociologists, this year the turnout at polling stations will be very high. However, few citizens know what the minimum turnout should be for the elections to be considered valid.
In the electoral process, not only the victory of a particular candidate in the election is important, but also voter turnout. The number of people who came to the polling stations indicates the interest of citizens in the elections and the exercise of their constitutional rights.
A high voter turnout in presidential elections indicates that citizens are ready to exercise their rights and choose the candidate they consider better than others.
In order for elections to be considered valid, a certain percentage of voter turnout was previously established. Until 2006, at least 50% of voters throughout the Russian Federation had to turn up at polling stations. Only in this case were the elections considered valid.
Later the law was changed. Experts believe that this happened because turnout in Russia began to fall with each subsequent election. The reason for this is the decline in interest in the electoral process.
Be that as it may, in 2006 Vladimir Putin signed a law that removes the minimum turnout for elections at any level, including presidential ones. As of today, there is no certain number of participants in an election for it to be considered invalid.
In 2018, those citizens of the country who are not at their place of registration at the time of voting will be able to vote in the presidential elections in Russia. Experts assure that such an amendment to the law will increase the turnout of citizens at polling stations.
According to available data, during the last presidential election, many people wanted to vote, but were unable to because they were far from their permanent registration location. This year such voting will be possible.
Turnout for the Russian presidential elections in 2018 will be high
This year, sociologists predict very high interest in the elections. Thus, according to published data by VTsIOM, in mid-February more than 80% of surveyed citizens are ready to go to polling stations. In January, the percentage of active Russians was much lower.
According to the St. Petersburg Politics Foundation, in some regions of Russia the turnout will be close to 100%. Such a high percentage may be possible in Tuva and Tyumen regions.
Last week, the State Duma adopted in the second reading another package of amendments to the electoral legislation. Like many other legislative initiatives over the past five years, the new document complicates election rules for opponents of the current government and simplifies them for the Kremlin.
The most significant of the one and a half hundred amendments made to the federal law “On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights and the Right to Participate in Referendums of Citizens of the Russian Federation,” as Vlast suggested in the previous issue, was the abolition of the minimum turnout threshold for elections at all levels.
According to the current legislation, this threshold is differentiated: presidential elections are recognized as valid with a turnout of at least 50%, at least 25% of voters must come to elections to the State Duma, and at least 20% to elections to regional parliaments. Regional laws allow the turnout threshold for municipal elections to be lowered below 20% or abolished altogether.
Now the activity of voters will not matter at all: elections at any level will be recognized as valid if at least one Russian citizen with the right to vote comes to them. The authors of this amendment from among the United Russia Duma members, of course, referred to the experience of civilized countries where there are no restrictions on turnout (see “World Practice”) and to the level of which Russia, in their opinion, has already fully matured. However, independent experts (see, for example, Dmitry Oreshkin’s interview in Vlast No. 44 of November 6, 2006) did not fail to note that low turnout, judging by the results of the latest regional elections, is objectively beneficial for the current government. If the activity of Russians who have the right to vote amounts to 35-40% of the list of voters, as was the case in the regions on October 8, then the sympathies of the majority of them are divided between the two parties in power - United Russia and A Just Russia, which, in fact, and must provide the Kremlin with a confident majority in the next State Duma. If the electorate, which is still sleeping, comes to the elections, then the outcome of the vote may turn out to be completely unpredictable, which is fraught for the Kremlin either with the loss of the Duma majority, or even with the failure of Operation Successor in the 2008 presidential elections.
In addition, this amendment deprives the non-systemic opposition, whose candidates are increasingly simply not allowed to participate in elections, of almost their last trump card - the opportunity to call on voters to boycott the elections in order to declare them invalid. At the same time, United Russia Duma members also warned of another method of popular protest, which was the removal of blank ballots from polling stations. From now on, the number of voters who took part in the voting will be determined not by the number of ballots issued, as before, but by how many of them will be found in the ballot boxes. Therefore, all Russians who received ballots but did not throw them into the ballot boxes will be considered not to have taken part in the vote and will not be included in any final protocols. And, accordingly, opponents of the regime will have no opportunity to prove to the world the injustice of the past elections by pointing out the difference between the number of those who received ballots and those who threw them into the ballot boxes.
In addition to opposition-minded voters, the victims of these amendments will be opposition candidates and parties, for which United Russia has come up with a number of new grounds for refusing registration. Although the official motive for these innovations was to strengthen the fight against extremism, the definition of “extremists” will most easily include candidates who are not sufficiently loyal to the current government.
Thus, registration will be denied to politicians who “during the term of office of a state authority or local government” (that is, for example, in the case of the State Duma - within four years before the next elections) made “calls for the commission of acts defined as extremist activity ". The list of such acts was significantly expanded last summer (see “Vlast” No. 29 of July 24), and if you wish, you can write down as extremists, say, communists blocking the regional administration building in protest against the monetization of benefits (“obstructing the activities of government bodies and their officials"), or democrats accusing Vladimir Putin of being responsible for the deaths of hostages in Beslan and the theater center on Dubrovka ("public slander against a person holding a public office, combined with accusing this person of committing acts of an extremist nature") . Moreover, the right to be elected will be denied even to those potential candidates who received administrative rather than criminal penalties for their “extremist acts.”
By the way, among the amendments preliminarily approved by the relevant State Duma committee on state construction, there was an even stricter rule allowing for the denial of registration to candidates who are in custody on charges of extremist crimes. This would allow the authorities to quickly exclude disloyal politicians from elections by bringing the necessary charges against them and choosing the appropriate preventive measure. But after representatives of the Central Election Commission at a meeting of the relevant committee of the State Duma stated that this clause contradicts the Constitution (it prohibits running for any government bodies only by persons in prison due to a court verdict that has entered into force), this norm migrated from the table of recommended acceptance of amendments to the rejected table.
At the request of the CEC, another provision of the bill was also changed, which allowed candidates to be denied registration for incomplete information about themselves. Firstly, the law prescribed an exhaustive list of information that a candidate must submit to the election commission when nominated, while the draft amendment allowed election commissions to interpret the term “incomplete information” at their own discretion. And secondly, the Duma obliged election commissions to notify candidates about shortcomings found in their documents at least three days before the expected registration date, so that they have time to make the necessary changes. True, representatives of the opposition immediately pointed out that two days (clarifications must be made no later than a day before possible registration) are clearly not enough if we are talking about, say, elections to the State Duma, in which deputies are elected from Kaliningrad to Primorye.
However, opposition candidates will have a chance to “get laid off” even after registration, if they violate the updated rules of election campaigning. The main one of these rules will be the ban on “denigrating” competitors during campaigning on television. The new law includes prohibited actions, in particular, “disseminating calls to vote against a candidate,” “describing possible negative consequences if a candidate is elected,” “disseminating information that clearly predominates information about a candidate combined with negative comments,” or "information that contributes to the creation of a negative attitude of voters towards the candidate."
In other words, after these amendments come into force, candidates and parties will be allowed to talk about their opponents as dead - either good or nothing. After all, any mention of a competitor’s shortcomings may be considered a violation of the above-mentioned prohibition, which may be punishable by deprivation of registration. Consequently, the entire pre-election competition between candidates and parties (including during their debates on live television, for which the Central Election Commission especially advocates) will ultimately come down to an exchange of pleasantries, and the one who praises himself better than others will win. But in this case, future candidates are unlikely to count on the sincere interest of ordinary Russian television viewers, to whom state television channels will offer such “debates” instead of their favorite concerts and TV series.
Dmitry Kamyshev
Appearance orders in the world
The question of the legitimacy of the elected government most often arises precisely where there is no turnout threshold and it is not at all necessary to go to the polls. A minimum voter turnout is provided in all countries of the world only in the case of referendums - usually it is set at 50%. In many countries around the world, there is a mandatory turnout threshold for presidential elections to be recognized as legitimate, especially in cases where the law provides for several rounds of voting. IN Macedonia, for example, a threshold of 50% is set for both rounds of presidential elections. In France, Bulgaria and some other countries, the turnout threshold is provided only for the first round of elections. The existence of a minimum threshold for voter turnout in parliamentary elections is typical for countries of Eastern and Central Europe, as well as former Soviet republics. For example, the 50 percent turnout threshold is set at Tajikistan, and 33 percent - in Uzbekistan(previously, here too the threshold was at 50%). However, here too there is a tendency to abolish the minimum threshold for voter turnout. This happened in Serbia, and after the declaration of independence and in Montenegro. In most countries in the world there is no minimum mandatory turnout threshold. In some countries this is due to compulsory participation in elections (for example, in countries such as Australia, Brazil or Venezuela). Where participation in elections is not mandatory and there is no minimum turnout threshold ( Great Britain, USA, Canada), the question of the lack of legitimacy of elected authorities is increasingly being raised. These countries are taking additional measures to attract voters to the polls. For example, in the United States, elections at various levels are often combined with voting on local legislative initiatives that are important to the population. |
The high level of turnout at the CEC was explained by several reasons. As Nikolai Bulaev, deputy chairman of the commission, told RBC, the turnout, in particular, increased due to the fact that young people actively voted in these elections, whom the Central Election Commission managed to attract to the polling stations. Bulaev did not specify how many representatives of the “youth” voted. In addition, Bulaev noted, the turnout turned out to be high due to the fact that “both the executive and legislative authorities showed maximum respect for the voter and tried to convince that his vote is important,” and now, according to the deputy chairman of the commission, “people have begun to think more about your future"; Bulaev did not name the reasons for this.
The highest turnout was recorded in the first presidential elections on June 12, 1991. Then 79,498,240 people took part in the voting - 74.66% of the total number of citizens eligible to vote. The least activity was observed in the 2004 presidential elections, when the turnout was 69,572,177 people (64.38%).
In 2018, the number of voters in Russia amounted to 107.2 million people, including 1.5 million Russians who are abroad. The most voters - 109.8 million - were included in the lists in the 2012 elections, the least - 106.4 million - in 1991.
In these elections, residents of Crimea, which became part of Russia in March 2014, voted for the first time. Turnout in Crimea by 18:00 was 63.86%, in Sevastopol - 65.69%. Previously, Crimeans voted only in the elections of State Duma deputies in 2016: then by 18:00 the turnout on the peninsula was 42.37%. In the 2010 Ukrainian presidential elections, turnout in Crimea was 63.3%.
Judging by the Central Election Commission turnout data as of 18:00 Moscow time, the most active voters were in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (84.86%), Tyva (83.36%) and Chechnya (78.11%).
In the presidential elections in 2012, as of 18:00, the highest turnout was recorded in Chechnya - 94.89% of voters. Then a turnout of more than 80% was recorded in two more regions - in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (85.29%) and in Karachay-Cherkessia (80.85%). In another eight regions, more than 70% of residents had voted by 18:00 - in Tyva, Mordovia, Chukotka, Dagestan, Ingushetia, Tyumen region, Tatarstan and Kemerovo region. The lowest turnout in 2012 was recorded in the Astrakhan region (47.14%), in the Stavropol Territory (47.47%) and in the Vladimir region (47.79%).
Turnout in capitals
Cities with a population of over a million have traditionally shown turnout below the national average. Chairman of the Moscow City Election Commission Valentin Gorbunov said that the turnout in the capital throughout the day was 4-6% higher than the results of the previous presidential elections for similar periods of time: as of 18:00, the turnout in the capital was 52.91%.
In the 2012 presidential elections, the final turnout in the elections in Moscow was 58.34%. The capital ranked 75th among regions in terms of voter turnout. 3.75% of Moscow voters voted at home, 3.97% using absentee ballots. As of 18:00 on March 4, 2012, turnout in the capital was 49.12%, the smallest was in three districts: Presnensky (44.3%), Beskudnikovsky (44.44%) and Vnukovo (45.01% ).
In St. Petersburg, by 18:00 the turnout reached 55.47% (62.27% of voters there voted in the last presidential elections), according to this indicator the city took 49th place in the country. There were 6.02% “homeworkers”, 2.45% at the place of stay.
An increase in turnout was also recorded at polling stations abroad. In total, the CEC registered over 1.5 million voters, of which 35 thousand voted early. Voting was organized at 394 polling stations in 144 countries.
In the Russian presidential elections held in 2012, 1.79 million people abroad had the right to vote, and 25.24% took part in them then (442 thousand, TASS data with reference to the Central Election Commission).
“In some polling stations, voter activity has doubled. But the most typical figure for the increase in turnout is 12-15%,” said CEC member Vasily Likhachev on March 18 (quoted by Interfax).
An increase in turnout was recorded in many countries. Thus, over 5.5 thousand people voted in Uzbekistan, Sputnik Uzbekistan reported. The turnout doubled compared to the results in the 2012 elections and five times compared to the figure recorded in the 2016 State Duma elections, the embassy told the agency.
In the USA and Great Britain, countries with which Russia’s relations are in crisis, voting also took place. In the middle of the day there was a queue to enter the polling station at the embassy in London, Interfax reported. There were up to 300 people in it. Opposite the embassy, a demonstration took place throughout the day, organized by businessman Yevgeny Chichvarkin, who called for a boycott of the elections (he reported on the progress of the action on Instagram).
In Ukraine, Russian citizens were unable to take part in the Russian presidential elections. On Friday, March 16, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine announced that it would not allow citizens to enter voting stations organized at the embassy in Kyiv, as well as at the consulates in Lviv, Kharkov and Odessa.
As the Kremlin wanted
RBC sources close to the Kremlin, RBC, say that the presidential administration will consider a good turnout following the election results to be 65% - no lower than in 2012. Judging by how turnout grew throughout voting day, the final results should satisfy the Kremlin, said political consultant Dmitry Fetisov.
The high turnout is due to the politicization of society, he is sure. Active information about the elections, together with international scandals, convinced Russians of the importance of the elections. Particularly striking in this sense were the scandals with the International Olympic Committee, which banned the Russian team from participating in the Olympics, and the attempted murder of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in the UK; British authorities believe that Moscow may be behind the murder. “At the same time, each of the population groups found its own motive: supporters of Vladimir Putin heard the thesis about the importance of turnout as a criterion for the legitimacy of elections, while opponents of the current president had the opportunity to protest him by voting for Pavel Grudinin [candidate from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation] and Ksenia Sobchak [candidate from party “Civil Initiative”],” said Fetisov.
The main reason for the high turnout is the very active work of the authorities to inform citizens, says political scientist Abbas Gallyamov. “If it weren’t for the organizational work, the turnout would not have exceeded 50%. Still, the elections were uninteresting from the point of view of content,” he told RBC. There was no intrigue in the election campaign and the elections themselves, says the political scientist: the candidates did not offer anything significantly new or unusual, and the winner of the elections was known in advance. “Usually such things have a big impact on turnout,” Gallyamov noted.
According to Fetisov, Russians were also motivated to go to the polls by the “image of an external enemy” that the government has created in recent months, declaring interference in Russian state sovereignty. Political scientist Evgeny Minchenko agrees with this: however, he considered the image of oppositionist Alexei Navalny, who called for a boycott of the elections, to be an external enemy necessary for the presidential campaign. His activity and the fueled conflict with the West led to an increase in turnout, Minchenko is convinced.
When are elections considered invalid? This issue has traditionally not received too much attention, while the media focus their interest on the election race and the cases of fraud and irregularities during elections that have become increasingly popular in recent years. Meanwhile, if the elections are declared invalid, repeat elections are held, the organization of which is again funded by taxpayers - money from the pockets of voters. In light of the creation of a new election bill in 2013, this topic has become more relevant than ever.
The need for a procedure for declaring elections invalid arose due to the likelihood of situations in which some candidates have a formal and technical advantage over others. The legislative framework of the issue has undergone repeated changes in order to objectively correspond to the changing conditions of Russian reality. The last major amendments in 2006 were the abolition of the minimum turnout threshold at polling stations (20% for regional elections, 25% for elections to the State Duma, 50% for presidential elections of the Russian Federation) and the “Against all” columns on ballots. The latter caused a great public outcry; to this day, many citizens and politicians continue to insist on the return of this column. The abolition of the minimum threshold, on the one hand, is objectively conditioned by the voluntary participation of citizens in elections, on the other hand, it creates favorable conditions for various kinds of violations and falsifications.
Currently, the grounds for declaring elections invalid are the following:
- One list of candidates must be allowed to distribute parliamentary seats. Here we are talking about the entry barrier, which is currently 5%. The bias and inconsistency of a state legislative (representative) body formed in this way is obvious.
- Lists of candidates who in total received less than 51% of the votes of voters who visited polling stations should be allowed to distribute deputy mandates.
- During the re-vote, all candidates dropped out.
- Neither of the two candidates received a sufficient number of votes to be elected in cases where the law provides for a repeat vote.
The decision to declare an election invalid is made by the election commission.
Repeat elections are also ordered if the results of the first elections are declared invalid - these concepts are not equivalent and should not be confused with failed elections. In reality, such a situation is less likely due to the lack of strict unambiguous criteria for the invalidity of results. The law deals with violations that do not allow one to reliably determine the results of the will of citizens, but the exact list of violations (these include violations during the election campaign and campaigning, illegal manipulation of ballots and directly deliberate violations in the work of the election commission) and the degree of seriousness are determined in each specific case in fact. Election results may also be invalidated by a court decision. In this case, the concept of “failed elections” contains significantly more certainty than the definition of “invalid results”.
We can say with confidence that the legislative framework and criteria for assessing this issue will change repeatedly; at the moment, the 2013 law fully meets the changes in Russian political reality in recent years and prepares the way for the next elections to the State Duma in 2016.
What to expect from the upcoming elections? Discussion on our forum.
Elections at all levels in Russia will be legal regardless of how many voters want to participate in them. The corresponding amendment to the electoral legislation was approved yesterday by the working group of the State Duma Committee on State Construction. According to experts, the main goal of this amendment is to artificially reduce the turnout for the next presidential elections, which should guarantee the Kremlin a painless solution to the “2008 problem.”
The author of the new legislative initiative was the deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on State ConstructionAlexander Moskalets("United Russia"), who proposed a number of amendments to the law "On basic guarantees of electoral rights and the right to participate in a referendum of citizens of the Russian Federation." Let us recall that a package of amendments to this law, significantly changing the rules of elections at all levels, was adopted by the State Duma in the first reading in June of this year, and now the preparation of the bill for the second reading is being completed.In particular, deputy Moskalets proposed removing from the law the article establishing a 20 percent threshold for the minimum voter turnout for elections at various levels. At the same time, the current law allows either increasing this threshold in federal elections (for example, in State Duma elections it is 25%, and in presidential elections - 50%), or reducing it (up to complete abolition) in municipal ones. If the amendment is approved, deputies will have the right to adopt appropriate changes to the laws on elections of the State Duma and the President and establish that federal elections are recognized as valid regardless of the number of voters who voted.
The formal argument in favor of abolishing the turnout threshold was the argument that there is no such restriction in many developed democracies, in particular in the United States. In fact, as the head of the Mercator research group told Kommersant, Dmitry Oreshkin , the amendment is being adopted in the interests of the Kremlin and the two current parties in power represented by United Russia and the A Just Russia: Motherland/Pensioners/Life party. As Mr. Oreshkin emphasized, based on many years of experience in regional elections, when turnout is low, it is mainly pensioners who come to vote. In the 90s, as a rule, they chose either the party in power or the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. But the latest elections to regional parliaments, held in October with a very low turnout of 35-40%, showed that now the most disciplined voters most often prefer one of the two parties in power - United Russia or the “actual left” from the newborn “A Just Russia” .
In other words, for the Kremlin, which expects to maintain control over the Duma even after the 2007 parliamentary elections, low turnout is objectively beneficial. According to Mr. Oreshkin, “65% of voters who are still asleep” are not interested in any of the parties in power, so he has no doubt that in the Duma elections, Kremlin political strategists will try to use “low turnout technology.” She may play an even more important role in the 2008 presidential elections, where there will no longer be such a clear leader as Vladimir Putin in 2000 and 2004. But if turnout remains at 50 percent in these elections, relying on a decrease in voter turnout could lead to disruption of the vote. “And in order not to risk anything, it was decided to completely remove all turnout limits,” says Dmitry Oreshkin. In this case, the “active electorate” will regularly vote for a presidential successor, and the “2008 problem” will be successfully resolved.True, the initiatives of Deputy Moskalets are not limited to questions of attendance...Mr. Moskalets actually proposed, following the already legalized refusal to campaign “against everyone,” to prohibit candidates from criticizing their competitors in elections. In his opinion, candidates for elective positions in their campaign speeches should not call on voters to vote against other parties and candidates, describe the negative consequences of their election, or disseminate information “contributing to the creation of a negative attitude towards the candidate.” That is, all pre-election campaigning, as conceived by Deputy Moskalets, should be reduced to candidates praising their own merits, and any critical statement about a competitor will become a reason for withdrawal from the elections.
Representatives of the opposition considered the new legislative initiatives of United Russia to be another blow to the very institution of elections. “It would have been easier to cancel the elections altogether,” Boris Nadezhdin, secretary of the SPS Political Council, told Kommersant. With the updated rules, in his opinion, this will still “be a completely different event, but not the elections in which the people, in accordance with the Constitution, become the source of power.”
At the same time, Dmitry Oreshkin suspects that amendments that clearly contradict the Constitution (such as banning criticism of opponents or refusing registration to persons under arrest) were deliberately introduced by United Russia in order to “divert the attention of the opposition and the indignant public to them.” Ultimately, the political scientist believes, the Kremlin will abandon them, but will be able to “legitimize those that it really needs, in particular the abolition of the turnout threshold.”The amendment on restoring the institution of early voting in elections at all levels, which the Central Election Commission resolutely opposed, could play approximately the same “masking” role. It is no coincidence that the head of the Duma Committee on State Construction, Vladimir Pligin, commenting yesterday on the results of the meeting of the working group, first of all announced its readiness to remove the clause on early voting from the bill. In addition, the working group corrected (but did not exclude, as required by the head of the Central Election Commission Alexander Veshnyakov) the rule on the removal of candidates from elections for incomplete information provided about themselves. Now all election commissions, before removing a candidate for such violations, are obliged to inform him about inaccuracies found in his documents and provide time to eliminate the shortcomings. True, the commissions are required to do this no later than two days before the final decision is made, so candidates may simply not have enough time to correct inaccuracies.
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