In the decade since it began holding competitive elections, Russia has overhauled its electoral legislation after each round of federal voting, and the most recent cycle was no exception. Shortly after the 2000 presidential elections were over, Putin issued a decree on 26 August 2000 setting up a working group within the Central Electoral Committee to prepare drafts for revising the electoral laws.

In October 2000 the commission announced that it planned to finish rewriting the laws by the end of 2001. However, during that year, the lawmakers only succeeded in adopting a new law on political parties. In June 2002, Russia revised its law on voter rights, which is the main framework law in the Russian system of electoral legislation. Once the framework law was in place, the Duma began to consider new laws for electing the Duma and the president and Putin ultimately signed these laws in December 2002 and January 2003 respectively. The president also signed a new law on the "Vybory" automated vote counting system. Taken together these laws marked the end of the latest cycle in electoral law transformations.

Even though the new laws were adopted one year later than the deadline announced by the Central Electoral Commission, they came into effect well in advance of the beginning of the next electoral campaign season. The previous laws on electing the lower house were adopted one to two months before the beginning of the corresponding campaigns.

The main change in the electoral laws is the increased role for political parties in the electoral process. National political parties will be the only organizations with the right to nominate candidates in federal and regional elections once the law goes into effect on 14 July 2003. The law preserves the right to form political blocs, but these blocs can have no more than three members and at least one member must be a political party. Individual citizens can nominate themselves for office, but groups of voters no longer have this right. Non-political organizations still have the right to nominate candidates in local elections.

Parties that succeed in having their lists included in the State Duma elections will gain a variety of new benefits. They will receive financing from the state budget proportional to the number of votes they receive. Additionally, the candida tes nominated by these parties will not have to gather signatures or provide a deposit to join the ballot. Both of these provisions will take affect after the 2003 Duma elections.

The new law on the State Duma elections requires that for the 2003 elections mandates distributed through the party-list system should go to no fewer than three party lists (the previous law required "no less than two"). After the 2003 elections, parties must receive more than 7 percent of the vote to enter the lower house (up from 5 percent) but no fewer than four parties must participate. Since it is unlikely that more than four parties will win over 7 percent of the vote, after 2007 Russia seems likely to have a fixed four- party system.

The presidential electoral law envisions that parties and blocs nominating presidential candidates will receive free air time and newspaper space in addition to the free air time and newspaper space given to all candidates. Half of the free newspaper space will be divided among the candidates and half among the parties that have nominated candidates. Thus party candidates have substantial advantages over independent candidates in terms of campaign resources.

Another important innovation aimed at strengthening the role of parties is the demand of the framework law that no less than half of the membership of regional legislatures be elected through party lists. This provision also will go into effect on 14 July 2003.

Beyond strengthening parties, the new laws seek to limit the tyranny of elect oral commissions and courts in refusing to register candidates or disqualifying them from races. The list of causes for taking such steps was reduced significantly. Canceling a candidate's registration for violating the electoral law has become an exclusive prerogative of the court. Now a lower court can take such a decision only five days or more before an election. However, the process was not taken to its logical conclusion: there are no limits on the time period for appeals in such cases.

The rules for setting up electoral commissions have significantly changed. Now, higher standing electoral commissions, rather than regional and local authorities, form the district, territorial, and precinct electoral commissions. The higher standing commissions also appoint the chairmen of such commissions (previously, the commissions elected their own chairmen). Regional and local authorities set up the respective regional and local commissions as in the past, however, each of these commissions has two members appointed by a higher commission and the chairmen of these commissions are elected at the recommendation of higher standing commissions. These changes should reduce the dependence of the electoral commissions on the regional and local authorities and strengthen the level of centralization in the organization of electoral campaigns.

While the process of amending the federal election legislation is complete for this cycle, the regions are still deeply involved in the process of bringing their legislation into line with the new federal norms. Most regions have never used party list voting in selecting members of their legislatures, so serious changes are required in existing regional legislation. Many regions hope that it will be possible to force changes in the federal legislation so that they do not have to use party lists in their voting. The Orel Oblast Soviet has already made such an appeal to the Constitutional Court. Several members of the Federation Council claim that some passages of the laws on the Duma and presidential elections are unconstitutional. Moreover, twelve different groups already have proposed amendments to the framework law on voters' rights following its adoption just six months ago.

Arkadii Lyubarev in Moscow

Published in Russian Regional Report, Vol. 8, No. 2, 3 February 2003

Index | Politics