Observers' rights and advisory members

Observers' rights are always the falsifiers' smoking gun. A violation of an observer's rights does not come from nowhere, or from the nastiness of commission members. It comes from the wish to get rid of the person who can expose them. The crooks are tired of stuffing ballots and being afraid they will be seen. That is stress. So they removed independent observation in five ways.

Refusal of admission over document problems#

On the very first day there was a problem with observers being refused admission. 7x7 collected evidence that more than 1,200 observers were refused. There was also a mass problem with the observer's place of registration. If an observer was appointed by a single-mandate candidate, some commissions picked on the fact that the observer had no active voting right in that district and therefore could not be an observer. In Leningrad Oblast 6 observers were refused that way. The problem was often in Moscow, where many people have permanent registration in other regions. Later the CEC clarified that a single-mandate candidate's observer can after all be a person who is not registered in the district they observe.

Removing an observer through the court#

Some observers were removed by court order. This practice began to be introduced in earnest together with the removal of advisory-member status from the law. Commission members with an advisory vote could not be removed even by a court, but observers can, and commissions are gradually learning to use that. It is a convenient tool with a well-worn mechanism: the commission fabricates testimony for the court that the observer supposedly obstructs the commission or the voters, and the courts legalise that crime.

How much more common has this become? I downloaded administrative cases for the 2021, 2025 and 2026 single voting days from court websites (every district court except Moscow). Then I picked out the cases that clearly concern removing observers or suspending commission members.

In 2025 there was no federal campaign. 13 cases turned up, 1 was returned because of defects and 12 were granted. So compare what can be compared: the 2021 and 2026 campaigns.

It has to be said that some 2021 cases may have been lost in the 2024 attack, but even before the attack we were never sure the court data was complete, and we look at what there is.

In 2021 there are 60 cases connected with an election commission's claim against an observer or a commission member. 77.7% of the claims were granted. In 2026, 36 cases turned up. There were noticeably fewer opportunities to observe. The safer advisory status is gone, so it is logical that with noticeably thinner observation coverage there are fewer cases too.

Removal or suspension by court order in 2026#

29 cases were granted (or 80.5%), from 6 regions: St Petersburg (11), Yamalo-Nenets (2), Moscow Oblast (10), Kirov (2), Sakhalin Oblast (1), Amur Oblast (2) and Zabaykalsky Krai (1).

Removal by court also has a terror effect. In Dolgoprudny the court removed or suspended only 5 people, but 16 left the precincts.

Removal in Amur Oblast#

An observer at precinct No. 330 was removed by the court because the observer:

… moved chaotically around the voting premises without notifying the chair in advance … asked commission members questions in a raised voice … tried to tell members of the election commission which actions to take, and in which order, thereby trying to influence the commission's decision

All of this looks like an ordinary active observer who saw a commission breaking the law and decided to record it on video. The observer explained:

the video was made exclusively of those violations which M. Yu. Schmidt recorded during the work of the election commission

And that is how it always is. Commission members grossly violate procedure or the observer's rights. The observer tries to record it and is immediately hit with the personal-data rule. If the CEC had adopted a resolution that an observer is immediately given access to video after filing a complaint at the precinct, problems like this would go away. Every court would simply watch, on the observer's phone, that the reason for the "raised voice" was the commission violating the observer's rights. But the CEC introduced a ban on an observer receiving video even after the voting days, which was covered in the first chapter.

Removing an advisory member in St Petersburg#

A striking case: in St Petersburg a judge, knowing that the law does not allow a commission member to be removed (they can only be suspended), removes the advisory member of precinct No. 57, sent by A Just Russia. For what? For filling in ticks on ballots on Friday. What was that, a political protest, or did someone notice a person preparing to stuff ballots for United Russia?

Stripping observers of their rights at precincts#

This is traditional for multi-day voting, because it makes the horror easier. Simply do not let them near.

In Kuban, at precinct 1010, the chair suspended a commission member from the count when the member had demanded in advance that the count be checked against the books. To me it is wild that a commission member is not allowed near the voter list. Though I ran into the same thing myself in Kuban when I was a commission member, including as an advisory member.

This right is in the law in a particular way: every commission member may check whether the voters were counted correctly. If signatures are stuffed, there will be fewer voters than ballots, so an important right is for each commission member to check the count against the voter list. It matters that a precinct member can be suspended from the count only by a court.

In Petersburg, independent commission members were denied access to the voter-list books and filed dissenting opinions with the protocol in large numbers. That is exactly why there are so many Petersburg court cases: the commissions fought off independent commission members with the courts. In Kuban, advisory members could not inspect one of the books, because it was simply carried away.

A prohibitive approach#

By law, observers too may inspect the list. Every page of it. There are no bans. But observers were pressured en masse and not allowed to look. Commissions showed no wish to be open about the entries in the voter list. Commissions in different regions also clearly obstructed an observer's chance to count how many voters were on the list. One commission deliberately showed the list from a distance, saying "otherwise you'll count".

This prohibitive approach outrages me. The commission understands in advance that an observer can easily count the number of signatures (say, by recording the voter numbers on a dictaphone and then summing them with an AI) and introduces a new ban: it limits either the time spent on each page or the viewing distance. The law contains no limit on how long an observer may inspect each page of the list. Moreover, the law forbids introducing new restrictions. But commissions, even if they let someone near the list, stop the observer from working out whether the most important document is in order.

And if an observer persists in demanding legality, they are either threatened with removal by a court (and the observer simply becomes a spectator on a little chair), or they really are removed, supposedly for obstructing the commission and in fact simply for demanding transparency and their rights. Ella Alexandrovna, what is this? Why is it like this? Why are you discrediting the electoral system?

TEC members were denied access to documents on election days in advance#

Some commissions took measures against independent commission members in advance. In Goryachy Klyuch and Yeysk, towns in Krasnodar Krai, territorial commissions adopted a new set of rules at the start of the year. Under it, a TEC member may inspect the commission's documents only on Monday or Thursday. So on the key three days of voting a TEC member cannot inspect a single document.

A commission member's inspection of documents and materials takes place on the commission's premises during an election campaign or referendum campaign twice a week (on Monday or Thursday, from 16:00 to 18:00), and outside an election or referendum campaign once a week (on Monday, from 16:00 to 18:00)

I have not studied how widespread this is, but of the 3 TECs I checked, 2 had a ban of this kind.