The Russian Election Compendium

Russian Presidential Election Conference
Basic Election Facts

Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project
John F. Kennedy School of Government

DATES:

The first round of the Russian presidential election will take place on Sunday, June 16, 1996.

• If no candidate reaches 50% of the vote in the first round, the top two candidates will compete in a second round run-off election. The date for such a run-off has not been set. By law, the Central Election Commission must publish the results of the first round no later than three weeks after the June 16 election (i.e. by July 7). (Final results of the Duma election were officially announced on December 29, 12 days after the election.) The presidential run-off must take place no later than two weeks after that (i.e. by July 21).

REGISTRATION:

• To be registered as a candidate, an individual had to submit one million valid signatures by Tuesday, April 16 to the Central Election Commission (CEC). 78 groups collected signatures but only 17 candidates successfully submitted over one million signatures by the deadline. Once submitted, the CEC has 10 days to rule on the validity of the signatures (i.e. by Friday, April 26). After the CEC officially registers a candidate, he can begin campaigning. Campaigning ends the day before the election (the last day of campaigning will be June 14). No polls may be published during the 5 days prior to the election (i.e. after June 11).

• As of April 17, four candidates, Yeltsin, Zyuganov, Zhirinovsky, and Gorbachev had been officially registered. Two candidates, Vladimir Bryntsalov and Martin Shakum had been denied registration. The remaining candidates, including Grigory Yavlinsky, Alexander Lebed, Svyatoslav Fedorov, Galina Starovoitova, and Sergei Mavrodi, are waiting for their CEC ruling.
• If a candidate is rejected by the CEC, he can a appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Russia, which can rule that the candidate must be reinstated.

MEDIA:

Official Rules of the Game:

• Each qualifying candidate gains free and equal access to state-run mass media (likely an hour of free TV per candidate). The media campaign will run from May 14 to June 14. State-run television is required to provide ten minutes of free airtime a day from 7-10:00 am and an additional ten minutes from 18:00-23:00 pm on national Russian TV to qualified candidates. Regional TV is required to provide ten minutes a day between 18:00-23:00. The order of appearance is determined by lottery.

• In the event of a second round run-off election, the two candidates will be granted additional free airtime on similar terms.

• Paid airtime can also be purchased by candidates, but it cannot exceed the free airtime. Paid political commercials must also not exceed 10% of the total free and paid airtime of the candidate (likely 12 minutes).

Rules in Practice:

• Most of the coverage of the campaign comes from news programs and interviews. As both Russian and international observers have noted, this coverage is strikingly pro-Yeltsin, anti-Zyuganov, and neglectful of all other candidates. This reflects the fear among the Russian media of a Communist victory, but is also the result of the replacement of the heads of state-run TV with Yeltsin supporters.

• A number of media moguls have allied with the Yeltsin camp. Igor Malashenko, the head of Independent Television (NTV), which has been a frequent critic of Yeltsin , has now joined Yeltsin's campaign advisory commission. Nikolai Svanidze, host of a widely watched evening interview program, also recently signed onto Yeltsin's campaign as an unpaid media consultant. When questioned about shedding his impartiality, Svanidze replied, "The Communists are fighting without rules. And if they win, there will be no independence for the media at all...We have no choice."

FINANCES:

Rules of the Game:

• Presidential candidates are allowed to spend a maximum of Rb14.5 billion ($3 million) during the campaign. Individual contributions are limited to Rb2.88 million ($600) and legal entities can contribute a maximum of Rb288 million ($60,000). All deposits and transactions must be made through special accounts in the state-run Sberbank. Candidates must report to the CEC the activities in this account within 30 days of the election.

• Registered candidates are granted Rb200 million ($41,500) from the government to assist in campaign expenses.

Rules in Practice

• As demonstrated in the December Duma elections, campaign finance laws are flagrantly disregarded by candidates and parties with minimal negative consequences. Dmitri Volkov, the political editor of Sevodnya, claimed, "It seems obvious that a large part of the election campaign (was) financed by cash, from one hand to another, including the Communists."

• In the Duma campaign, political parties and independent candidates spent an estimated $83 million according the CEC. No one is certain of campaign budgets for the presidential election, expenditures are expected to be well into the tens of millions of dollars.

ELECTION OBSERVATION

Rules of the Game:

• The draft law "On Public Monitoring of Elections and on Openness and Glasnost in Vote Counting" passed its third and final reading in the Duma on April 17.

• The law allows any Russian citizen who collects 10 signatures to become a local election observer. Any Russian citizen who collects 50 signatures can be a regional election observer. Observers will have the right to be present at the polling stations, to attend vote counting, and to see the results of the vote counting while it is completed by members of the election commission.

• Article Six of the law provides for recounting a randomly chosen sample of 2% of the precincts within a voting district. If any errors are found, the law would trigger further recounts.

Rules in Practice

• Wide scale voting fraud is assumed to have occurred in the 1993 Duma elections. In the 1995 election, by contrast, consensus judgment found the election predominantly free and fair. Voter fraud amounted to no more than a few percent of the total vote cast.