MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party maintained its tight grip on the nation's parliament in three-day elections criticized by opposition parties and independent observers for ballot stuffing and tampering, according to election results announced by the Central Election Commission.
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CEC head Ella Pamfilova said United Russia won, holding on to its supermajority in the parliament with a turnout of 51.68 percent, well above the 2016 turnout of 47.88 percent — the lowest in Russian history.
Coming in for particular criticism by the opposition was a new, online voting system used in six regions, which was described as opaque and has been credited with preserving United Russia seats, especially in Moscow.
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The Communist Party — which came in second as usual — announced it would not recognize the online voting results and would not do so in the future, saying the system had no integrity.
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Police cordoned off Pushkin Square in central Moscow after Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov called for protests to “defend the election.” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin denied Communist Party applications to stage protests Monday, Tuesday or Friday.
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The results mean Putin’s party has won all five State Duma elections since 2003, giving the Kremlin a compliant parliament that has long supported the president as he cracked down on political freedoms and crushed his opponents.
United Russia’s approval rating was hovering around 30 percent in the months leading to elections, due to voter discontent over increases in the pension age, high food prices, declining real wages and the handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the election was “competitive, open and fair.”
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“The competitiveness, openness, and fairness of the past elections certainly mattered and matters above all for the president, and we definitely view the past electoral process very, very positively in this respect,” Peskov said Monday.
The result will enable the Kremlin to maintain its tight political control over the country. Delivering a United Russia victory was seen as particularly important, with presidential elections in 2024 where Putin is expected to seek his fifth term in office, after constitutional term limits were ditched in another controversial vote last year. Putin last year gained the right to contest two more terms, meaning he could rule until 2036.
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The three-day elections took place against the background of a sweeping crackdown on the opposition, human rights activists and independent journalists.
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Opposition leader Alexei Navalny is in jail. His electoral network was declared an extremist organization in June and effectively banned. Its leaders, other opposition figures, human rights activists, human rights lawyers and independent journalists have been arrested or fled the country. Dozens of opposition candidates were barred from running or withdrew.
With voting over three days, independent observers and opposition figures complained that in many cases ballots were not properly secured during the nights. Russian social media was flooded with videos of blatant ballot stuffing and thugs intimidating observers and independent journalists.
Opposition candidates complained of cases where observers were denied access to polling stations by officials or were pushed away by unidentified thugs or arrested by police.
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But elections chief Pamfilova said there were fewer violations than in previous elections.
Aside from ballot stuffing and the barring of opposition candidates, the main controversy has been the opacity of the online voting used in six regions and long delays in the release of these results — a system likely to go national in presidential elections due in 2024. Analysts warn that there is no way to verify election results with the online approach.
A number of opposition candidates including those from the Communist Party were well ahead of United Russia in paper balloting but fell dramatically behind when online votes were announced Monday. Opposition figures claimed authorities used online votes to overturn opposition wins seen in the verifiable paper balloting.
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“We do not recognize the online voting information from Moscow now, and we will not do so in the future,” deputy chairman of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, Dmitry Novikov, told a news conference Monday. “The party saw the picture change after the online voting results were added.”
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Valery Rushkin, head of the Moscow branch of the Communist Party, said there were clear violations in online voting with candidates winning in paper ballots but scoring an inexplicably low vote in online voting.
“It is the same all over Moscow,” he said. “It is a total violation.” He called on voters to reject the stolen election and “come out with us to fight for your rights.”
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