Third training session for election monitors held in Moscow

The Golos movement, acting with support from the Central Election Commission of Russia, organized the third training session for election monitors. The event was held in Moscow on August 11-13. This was the third such training session for instructors, organized by Golos this summer.

The training session was attended by the representatives of candidates, parties, monitoring groups and election commissions as well as by election monitor instructors from 14 regions: Moscow, Voronezh, Irkutsk, Kirov, Kurgan, Lipetsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Novgorod, Ryazan, Samara, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk and Perm Regions, and Republic of Adygea.

“This is the final, third training session for the election monitor instructors that was held in the run up to the single election day on September 10. Altogether, in the course of three training sessions, we were able to prepare 70 instructors from 29 regions. Now, these instructors will be able to independently develop and organize effective training sessions aimed at different audiences and election monitors with different motives. Now it’s in their hands. I’m convinced that after returning to the regions, they will organize high-quality training sessions, and for our part we will provide them with the available methodological support,” noted the co-chairman of Golos Grigory Melkonyants.

The training session utilized different forms of education: interactive exercises, lectures, brainstorming sessions, and group work.

In the course of the three days, the participants went through all the available components of training sessions for the election monitors, discussed the main principles of effective training, and mastered the rules of working with study groups.

Electoral law, election day procedures and actions to confront violations of law were discussed in the legal part of the training. The rules for accounting for the monitors’ needs and motives were worked through in full detail, and there were discussions of the methods and practices of motivating election monitors during training and on election day.

A separate part of the program was dedicated to analysis of conflict situations that can arise during election monitoring. Participants learned to imitate them during training sessions and shared their experience with successful methods and practices of conflict resolution.

The Central Election Commission of Russia was represented by experts in the person of the head of the analysis and forecast department of the Commission’s Administration Olga Yagodina, and the chief advisors of the analysis and forecast department Natalya Tabanakova and Vera Romanova. Representative of the Russian Foundation for Free Elections Irina Skupova also played an active role in the training session.

On the third day of the session, the participants split up into groups and designed curriculums for four different formats of training sessions, and later presented them to the panel of exacting experts.

“Results of the training sessions exceeded our expectations. Following elections on September 10, we’ll continue to train instructors for election monitors. We’ve received proposals from the political parties to organize similar training sessions so that they can create intraparty instructor groups. We are ready to collaborate with all sociopolitical forces and to provide methodological support in the process of training qualified monitors, because this is what the Russian voters need,” noted the co-chairman of Golos Grigory Melkonyants.

Following the training, instructors received their certificates and sets of study materials to help them organize training sessions for regional election monitors.