On Sunday, the final day of voting, polling stations close at 8 p.m. and the election enters its final phase: ballots are counted, figures are announced, the enlarged form and the protocol are filled in, the documents are taken to the TEC, where a summary table is compiled, and then the data enters the GAS “Vybory” system. And it is along this route that the result can change.
An honest commission has no reason to hide the count, take the protocol away, refuse to issue a copy of it, or damage ballots. The transparent procedure is set out in detail in the law. Any departure from it is therefore a violation of the law in itself and, at the same time, a signal: the commission is creating conditions in which more serious violations can be concealed.
The “Karta narusheniy” (Map of Violations) archive shows the scale of the problem. In the State Duma deputy elections and regional elections of 19 September 2021, 5,849 reports were published in it. In the five categories relating to the count and the establishment of results, 1,184 reports were recorded of violations during the count, manipulation of protocols and unlawful actions by higher-level commissions. In the presidential election of 17 March 2024 there were 316 such reports, in the regional and municipal elections of 8 September 2024 — 67, and in the regional and municipal elections of 13 September 2020 — 238. And these are far from all violations, only those that were publicly recorded.
The count is removed from observation
The law requires commissions to follow strict procedures during the count: opening the ballot boxes, sorting the ballots, announcing the results, filling in the protocol and its enlarged form — a huge sheet of paper hung on the wall precisely so that everyone can see what is happening. This is necessary so that observers can see all the key stages and satisfy themselves that the ballots are being counted honestly. But if the chair takes the documents into another room, if stacks of ballots are shielded from observers, if the figures are not announced and the sheet of paper remains blank, a reasonable question arises: why is the commission doing this?
For example, in the Russian presidential election of 4 March 2012, at PEC No. 701 in Sterlitamak, an observer reported that the count took place outside the view of the camera and of observers. The data were not entered into the enlarged form, and the chair and the secretary went to another room to draw up the protocol. At that moment the commission acquired the opportunity to write into the official document figures that no one would be able to compare with the actual count.
In the Russian presidential election of 18 March 2018 in Kazan, observers reported that access to stacks of ballots was blocked at three polling stations and that the count was dragged out until five in the morning — probably in the hope that the observers would run out of steam, go home and allow the commission to falsify the documents without interference. Formally the observers remained in the room, but they had no actual control over the ballots.
The statistics confirm that these were not isolated conflicts. In the State Duma and regional parliament elections of 19 September 2021, the “Map of Violations” collected 461 reports of violations of the sequence and procedure of the count. In the presidential election of 17 March 2024 — 107, in the regional and municipal elections of 8 September 2024 — 20, and in the elections of 13 September 2020 — 91.
Falsification during the drawing up of the protocol
The protocol must record a result that has already been established. But if it is taken away “for correction”, rewritten after the count, or a new version is drawn up without notifying the members of the commission, that is already a substitution of the basic document that is the primary source for determining the election results, not the correction of a slip.
In the presidential election of 17 March 2024, observers documented at least seven protocols in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast in which hundreds of votes were added to Vladimir Putin and a corresponding number taken away from Vladislav Davankov. In Moscow, observers reported at least five more protocols with signs of figures being filled in after the fact; one episode was captured on video.
In the same election, at PEC No. 2224 in Krasnodar, after an arithmetic error was discovered, the commission took the protocol into a room closed to observers in order to “correct” it.
In the State Duma elections of 19 September 2021, at PEC No. 2858 in Moscow’s Filyovsky Park district, the TEC demanded a new protocol after receiving the first version. This is an absolutely unlawful demand, but the PEC chair agreed to comply with it. The repeat protocol was drawn up without notifying the PEC members and no copy was issued to observers; the original protocol simply evaporated. An honest commission has no need to destroy the first version of the protocol and deprive observers of the opportunity to compare the documents. This gives entirely reasonable grounds to suspect that the figures were being adjusted — in other words, simply put, the protocol was falsified.
In the elections of 19 September 2021, 206 reports were recorded of situations in which a commission announced one set of voting results but entered different data in the protocol, and a further 134 reports of violations in the issuing of copies of protocols. In the presidential election of 17 March 2024, 88 and 49 cases respectively were reported.
Falsification in TECs
Election results are recorded in several successive documents: later ones are drawn up on the basis of earlier ones. First the PEC protocol is filled in and its copies are certified. Then the PEC data are combined in the TEC summary table and published in the GAS “Vybory” system. If the figures in them do not match, then they were changed at one of the links in the chain of transmission. Commissions sometimes try to explain discrepancies as “technical errors”. But they cannot explain why the errors, as a rule, appear precisely where there was no independent control.
In the State Duma and regional elections of 18 September 2016, journalists compared copies of PEC protocols with GAS “Vybory” data in Mytishchi, Moscow Oblast. Discrepancies were found at 68 of the 84 polling stations checked. The investigation by Novaya Gazeta said that this added roughly 2,000 extra votes for United Russia. The regional commission acknowledged that the data in the copies did not match “the first versions of the PEC protocols”, implying that their final versions must exist somewhere. Where did they come from, who drew them up, and why was this necessary? The Moscow Oblast commission did not answer these questions. As far as is known, no punishment of the chairs of the 68 commissions followed for this series of discrepancies.
With a functioning legal mechanism, such mass violations should have led to a total verification of the protocols, seizure of the originals, questioning of PEC chairs and TEC members, a recount of the results at the polling stations, and criminal cases wherever it was established that the discrepancy was the result of deliberate actions. And if, after such a verification, it turned out that the additional votes had affected the distribution of seats, the election results should have been annulled or revised. But the published investigation had no legal consequences.
In the presidential election of 17 March 2024 in Perm, discrepancies were found at at least 12 polling stations. For example, at station No. 3437 the TEC table showed 693 votes for United Russia, while the CEC website showed 1,070. That is, the votes were added after the results had been sent to the federal centre.
The “Map of Violations” collected 57 reports of problems in higher-level commissions in the elections of 19 September 2021, and 15 in the presidential election of 17 March 2024. It should be noted that these are only the reports in which observers directly pointed to the fact of some action by higher-level commissions. Many reports not included in this statistic describe discrepancies between the figures obtained at the PEC and the published data. However, the authors could not establish whether the discrepancy occurred during the delivery of documents from the PEC to the TEC, during the period the documents were held by the TEC, or when the data were entered into the system. The low number of reports in a separate category therefore does not mean that interference by higher-level commissions was rare.
Safe packages, and what is wrong with them
Safe packages are needed in multi-day voting to ensure the safekeeping of ballots cast in the first days of voting. In essence they are simply opaque plastic bags that are sealed in a special way, including with the handwritten signatures of observers. In theory this should protect the ballots from unlawful interference during overnight storage.
In reality, however, safe packages are often opened, ballots from different packages are mixed together, and sometimes the packages are simply swapped, as are the records of their sealing. And to make this easier, observers are often not issued copies of such records.
In the State Duma and regional elections of 19 September 2021, at PEC No. 1409 in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, an observer was asked to sign a safe-package record with 200 extra votes. At PEC No. 2668 in Samara, nine safe packages were opened almost simultaneously, and the ballots from different packages were mixed into a common pile — making it impossible to establish how many votes had been cast for each candidate on a particular day of voting. The observers’ complaint about this was rejected.
In the same 2021 campaign, a total of 326 reports of violations in the handling of safe packages were recorded — the largest category in those elections.
Opposition votes disappear, and the “right” votes appear
The most direct way to change the result is to add votes to a pro-government candidate, declare a valid ballot invalid, or “transfer” votes from one candidate to another.
In the presidential election of 4 March 2012, at St Petersburg PEC No. 1105, observers reported that the chair announced one set of figures but issued a copy of the protocol with different ones. Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s result changed from 64 to 16 votes, Gennady Zyuganov’s from 200 to 97, Sergei Mironov’s from 100 to 98, Mikhail Prokhorov’s from 432 to 76, and Vladimir Putin’s from 704 to 1,174.
In the regional and municipal elections of 13 September 2020 in Novosibirsk Oblast, PEC chair Valentina Markina and commission members Mina Komarova and Regina Oseychuk entered knowingly false information into the voter lists, forged the signatures of voters who had not turned out, counted the votes incorrectly and drew up a false protocol. The Barabinsky District Court established all these facts and found them guilty under Article 142.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, after which it sentenced each of them to one year of deprivation of liberty, suspended, with a probation period of one year. Why, given the collusion and the use of official position by the defendants, the court was satisfied with a suspended sentence is a separate question. The published materials on the case do not report any annulment of the results at PEC No. 1095, any recount, or any revision of the results at the TEC or district level.
In the elections to the Orenburg City Council held from 2 to 13 September 2020 (including early voting), the chair of PEC No. 1072, Natalya Zapolskikh, and a member of the same PEC, Svetlana Popova, invented 128 fake voters, forged their signatures, filled in ballots and signed false protocols. The court imposed fines of 260,000 and 270,000 roubles respectively. The results at the polling station were not annulled (United Russia won there), and the term of the chair of the city election commission, who may well have directed their actions, was extended for another five years. In a state governed by the rule of law, the fines would have been only one element of the response: the investigation would have been obliged to identify all participants in the falsification and to examine the role of those in whose favour the result was distorted.
What the law provides for and how the legal mechanism should work
Administrative fines are provided for procedural violations during the count. Under Article 5.24 of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation, violation of the procedure for counting, processing of results and determination of results is punishable by a fine of 500 to 1,500 roubles for the chair or a member of a commission. Incorrect drawing up of a protocol marked “Repeat” — 1,500 to 2,000 roubles. Under Article 5.25 of the Code of Administrative Offences, failure to provide observers with information on the results costs a PEC chair 500 to 1,000 roubles, and a TEC chair 1,000 to 2,000 roubles. Unlawful issuance or receipt of a ballot under Article 5.22 — 30,000 to 50,000 roubles. Concealment of leftover ballot print runs under Article 5.23 — up to 2,500 roubles for citizens, up to 4,000 roubles for officials and up to 50,000 roubles for organisations. Such sums are proportionate in cases of isolated negligence that did not affect the result. But if a chair deliberately distorts the count, refuses to issue a copy or creates a second version of the protocol, a small administrative fine becomes an incentive: the risk to him is negligible, while the benefit to the person commissioning the manipulation is incommensurable.
According to the letter of the law, if actions change the content of documents or the result itself, criminal liability arises. Article 142 of the Criminal Code provides for falsification of election documents a fine of up to 300,000 roubles, compulsory labour or deprivation of liberty for up to four years. Article 142.1 of the Criminal Code, for falsification of voting results — a fine of up to 500,000 roubles, compulsory labour or deprivation of liberty for up to four years. Article 142.2 of the Criminal Code, for unlawful issuance of ballots by a commission member, provides for a fine of up to 500,000 roubles, compulsory labour or deprivation of liberty for up to four years; for a group the punishment can reach five years. In a state governed by the rule of law, these articles would be applied not as a rare exception but to every identified perpetrator, yet in Russian practice the consequences are most often limited to administrative fines. In cases of group collusion, false protocols and mass distortion of the result, a symbolic fine does not correspond to the gravity of the act.
Beyond punishing the perpetrators, in a functioning state governed by the rule of law the matter does not end there. All documents and video recordings must be immediately demanded and their safekeeping ensured. Then the entire chain from the PEC to GAS “Vybory” must be checked, a recount conducted, the organisers and beneficiaries identified, and the results at the polling station or of the entire election annulled if the original result cannot be reliably restored.