Election of the Governor of St. Petersburg (2014)

The Governor of St. Petersburg, Georgy Poltavchenko, filed an application for early resignation and announced his intention to stand for election as the city’s top official on June 4, during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin .

On June 11, deputies of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg scheduled the elections for a single voting day - September 14, 2014 . 43 deputies voted for, three abstained, there were no voters.

• from June 16, the nomination of candidates began.
• from June 16 to July 16 - the period of collecting signatures of municipal deputies and registration of applications of candidates in the election commission.

Right of nomination

A citizen of the Russian Federation who has reached the age of 30 years may be elected Governor of St. Petersburg.

In St. Petersburg, candidates are nominated only by political parties, which, in accordance with federal laws, have the right to participate in elections. Self-nomination is not allowed.

The candidate should not have the citizenship of a foreign state or a residence permit in any other country.

Since June 2013, the candidate for governor is also required to submit a written notice to the election commission that he does not have accounts (deposits), does not store cash and valuables in foreign banks. The candidate must close all such accounts by the time of registration.

Municipal Filter

On June 1, 2012, a law came into force that returned direct elections of the heads of constituent entities of the Russian Federation . However, the so-called municipal filter was introduced. All candidates for the post of head of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation (both nominated by parties and self-nominated), according to the law, are required to collect from their support from 5% to 10% of the signatures of the total number of municipal deputies and elected heads of municipalities, including from 5 to 10 deputies of representative bodies of municipal districts and urban districts and elected heads of municipal districts and urban districts in elections. Municipal deputies have the right to support only one candidate ^[5] .

The maximum percentage is set in St. Petersburg - candidates must collect signatures of municipal deputies in the amount of 10% of the total, while deputies must represent 3/4 of the constituencies. Each deputy has the right to subscribe for only one candidate and does not have the right to withdraw his signature. Moreover, all signature sheets must be notarized.

On June 11, 2014, the city election commission published a calculation of the number of required signatures ^[6] . So the candidate must collect from 156 to 163 signatures in at least 84 municipal districts (3/4 of all districts). Signatures must be submitted in an election commission with all documents no later than July 16.

In St. Petersburg, 111 municipalities . The total number of deputy mandates is 1,565. However, at the time of the election, there were only 1,412 current deputies. If there was no requirement to collect signatures in 3/4 municipalities, then 8-9 candidates could be enough signatures. However, in 68 out of 111 municipalities, from 6 to 10 deputies work. Thus, a maximum of four candidates have enough signatures ^[7] .

Signature Collection, Filter Criticism

On June 20, the candidate for governor Oksana Dmitrieva at the plenary meeting of the State Duma of the Russian Federation called “farce with torture” “the unprecedented pressure, the number of threats and the scale of the psychological persecution that municipal deputies who supported the candidate’s unwanted power faced”.

On June 30, United Russia announced that in support of the nomination of Georgy Poltavchenko, about 1,000 municipal deputies out of 1409 were signed ^[8] .

On July 8, Oksana Dmitrieva expressed dissatisfaction with the position of the Communist Party and Yabloko, who could support her, but instead nominated their own candidates. She was especially embarrassed by the position of the “Yabloko”, who put forward their candidate, but are ready to help her in collecting signatures. Oksana Dmitrieva expressed confidence that if other opposition parties followed the example of the Civil Platform, which expressed support for Dmitrieva, then the required number of signatures from a single candidate would have been collected ^[9] .

On July 9, the chairmen of the St. Petersburg branches of the Yabloko and A Just Russia parties Andrei Palevich and Oksana Dmitrieva made a joint statement in connection with massive violations of the law when registering candidates for municipal elections. According to the leaders of the two regional branches of the parties, there is a clear conspiracy - the government covers absolute chaos when registering candidates for deputies of municipal councils in exchange for blocking the "municipal filter" for opposition candidates for governors. The authors of the statement expressed confidence that violations can occur only with the direct patronage of the city election commission and its chairman. Palevich and Dmitrieva appealed to the leadership of the country and the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation with a demand to immediately remove Aleksey Puchnin from the duties of chairman of the election commission, cancel municipal elections in districts where the nomination of candidates was disrupted by illegal actions of commissions, disband election commissions that flagrantly violated the law, and bring their leaders to criminal responsibility ^[10] .

On July 15, Yabloko announced its support for Oksana Dmitrieva in collecting signatures.

July 17, on the last day of registration, all 7 nominated candidates submitted their documents to the electoral commission. The maximum for the passage of the municipal filter 163 signatures of municipal deputies passed Georgy Poltavchenko ("United Russia"), Konstantin Sukhenko (LDPR), Irina Ivanova (Communist Party), Tahir Bikbaev ("Green"), Andrei Petrov ("Homeland"). A Just Russia candidate Oksana Dmitrieva submitted documents with 111 signatures with a minimum of 156. Yabloko candidate Anatoly Golov gave three signatures to Yabloko deputies Dmitrieva and submitted only a financial report to the election commission ^[11] .

Registration

On July 20, the election commission registered Andrei Petrov ^[12] (Homeland) and refused to register Oksana Dmitrieva (Fair Russia) and Anatoly Golov (Yabloko).

On July 22, the election commission registered the remaining four candidates - Irina Ivanova (Communist Party of the Russian Federation), Takhir Bikbaev (Greens), Konstantin Sukhenko (LDPR) and Georgy Poltavchenko (United Russia).

Candidates for the election of the governor were nominated by 7 parties. Due to the failure of the so-called representatives of the opposition, Oksana Dmitrieva from A Just Russia and Anatoly Golov from Yabloko, were not allowed to enter the municipal filter .

As a result, the election commission registered only 5 candidates (shown in bold in the following table).

On June 22, Andrei Petrov, candidate for governor and head of the regional branch of the Rodina party, organized in St. Petersburg a meeting of journalists with representatives of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic . Speakers were the commander of the ghost battalion Alexander Kostin and the secretary of the Kamennobrodsky district committee of the Communist Party of the Luhansk People's Republic Vitaly Kiselev ^[15] . It was announced that Petrov was appointed the official representative of the LPR in St. Petersburg ^[16] .

The election programs of most candidates were published on August 14, 2014.

The campaign period began on August 16, from which moment candidates were able to express themselves in the media.

During the election campaign, the RealRate rating agency ^[17] conducted an online poll dedicated to the election of the governor. 9645 people were interviewed, the votes were distributed as follows: Georgy Poltavchenko: 50.3%, Andrey Petrov: 30%, Irina Ivanova: 15%, Takhir Bikbaev: 2.4%, Konstantin Sukhenko: 2% ^[18] .

According to the CEC, the victory was won by the acting head of the region Georgy Poltavchenko ^[4] . He received 1,130,199, i.e. 79.30% of those who participated in the vote ^[4] .

The final turnout (those who participated in the elections) amounted to 1,468,292 people (39.36% of the total number of voters included in the lists) ^{[1] [4]} .

On September 24, 2014, the inauguration of Georgy Poltavchenko took place at the Mariinsky Palace in St. Petersburg ^[19] . On the same day, he signed a decree on the appointment of Valentina Matvienko as a member of the Federation Council from the executive branch of St. Petersburg ^[20] .

“Fair Russia” and “Yabloko” declared their non-recognition of the election results and the legitimacy of the elected governor ^[21] .

Oksana Dmitrieva, a deputy of the State Duma and a failed candidate for governor, criticized the gubernatorial and combined municipal elections in St. Petersburg, stating, in particular: “The elections were held without elections and did not allow any real competitors to register, both on the gubernatorial and on municipal elections ”,“ Why then we suddenly get the situation that the president receives 60 percent in fair elections, and Mr. Poltavchenko 80? <...> [regional authorities] used the patriotic upsurge and the president’s high rating solely as a cover for large-scale, fantastic election fraud. " ^[22]

• Municipal elections in St. Petersburg (2014)

• St. Petersburg Electoral Commission