Media: The President endorsed the amendments to Election Law

According to ‘Kommersant’, on January 20, Vladimir Putin signed four proposals of CEC and AP concerning modifications of the electoral legislation and recommended to work on respective amendments to the laws ‘On guarantees of electoral rights ...’ and ‘On elections of deputies of the State Duma’ that must be finalized before the start of State Duma election campaign.

The proposed amendments are as follows:

• To deploy two observers nominated by a party or a candidate to each polling station (by now, only one observer can be deployed).
• An observer can be expelled from PEC only by court decision.
• To entitle observers to take photos and shoot video.
• To oblige parties and candidates to identify the election observers who will observe elections at a particular polling station and notify about it the election commissions not later than three days before the Election Day.

‘The new amendments to electoral law, according to preliminary data, may extend the rights of observers during the elections’, - TASS reported the view of head of HRC committee on election law Ilya Shablinsky.

‘The obligation of notification carries risks such as pressure on observers before the polling day, as the information on all the observation arrangements will be available in advance to miscreants. It may complicate the work of mobile election observers. However, considering the declining interest in election observation such puzzles and restrictions will lead to the mobilization and improvement of the process of civil monitoring,’- said the co-chair of movement ‘Golos’ board Grigory Melkonyants.