Tiraspol, 12 December. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. According to preliminary data, Vadim Krasnoselsky has gained the majority of votes in the presidential elections in Tiraspol, the head of the capital's election commission, Alexander Lisovoy, told Novosti Pridnestrovya. The second place has gone to the acting head of state, Yevgeny Shevchuk. It should be noted that voter turnout was 59.16%.
International observers described the election process as quite legitimate, free and transparent.
«Legitimacy, legality, in my opinion, are fully observed. Legitimacy is the people's recognition; there is such an indicator, as a matter of fact, as voter turnout. At the majority [of precincts] it varies from 50% to 60%. This is preliminary data," said the chair of Russia's Association of Political Lawyers, Roman Smirnov, who was monitoring the process of transferring protocols and sealed ballot papers from precinct election commissions (PEC) in Tiraspol to the territorial election commission (TEC).
However, a number of violations and shortcomings in the electoral campaign have been revealed. A large part of reprimands and complaints by observers concerned voter lists. Observers at precinct 239 filed a complaint about adjustments to voter lists being made after they had been printed out and brought to the polling station. Thus, on 8 December, when early voting was already under way at TECs, the names of six persons were removed from the list of voters in this precinct based on a letter from the Central Election Commission (CEC), the chairman of PEC 239, Viktor Ovcharenko. Observers filed a complaint on this fact.
In addition, voters were excluded from voter lists at this precinct on the day of voting also based on the CEC's letter.
On the voting day, the CEC also sent a letter to precinct 21 demanding to exclude 10 persons from voter lists. However, one of the citizens whose names the CEC demanded to remove from the list had already voted by that moment. His ballot was counted along with other ballots in the box as it was impossible to identify the ballot paper cast by the excluded person.
An observer at this precinct filed a complaint about belated changes being made in voter lists. At the same time, according to the chair of PEC 210, Lyudmila Obruchkova, the CEC's letter did not explain the reason for striking those citizens off voter lists. According to her, the CEC used to state the reason for exclusion, be it the change of residence or death.
Another complaint about electoral lists was submitted by a voter registered at precinct 234. He decided to apply directly to the CEC, bypassing his precinct commission, in connection with the fact that on the voter list was an unknown man registered at his address. A similar case occurred in precinct 223.
As we have informed, the quality of voter lists has been under public discussion In Pridnestrovie for a long time. After the 2015 parliamentary election, a significant number of Pridnestrovians, including Chairman of the Government Pavel Prokudin, noted they had seen the names of already deceased persons on voter lists. In this connection, state administrations together with passport offices worked hard to verify information about voters. The total number of inaccuracies found in the database of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, based on which voter lists are compiled, amounted to 50,000.
However, after heads of administrations tried to submit verified information about voters to the Central Election Commission, its chief, Yelena Gorodetskaya, said that instead of verified information the data collected by heads of administrations were, in fact, new voter lists. The Tiraspol City Court and later the Supreme Court sided with the CEC.
Besides, one of election commissions piled by mistake voting protocols along with voter lists. According to the regulations, a bag with voter lists should be sealed up and opened only in the CEC. However, the commission members not only added protocols and other documents to the bag but also forgot to seal it up and brought it unsealed to the TEC. Because of this, members of the TEC had to draw up a corresponding statement, and all the PEC members had to come to the TEC and re-arrange all documents.
Earlier that day, during a press conference, Slovenia's international observer Jenko Rok voiced a number of violations that he had noticed. The most serious violation, according to him, was the incident that had occurred at precinct 213. There, the chair of the commission had repeatedly shut himself in a separate room with a teller of one of presidential candidates. It was unknown what they had talked about.
However, according to Russian observer Roman Smirnov and his Estonian colleague Dmitry Linter, most of the violations in this election were technical and could not affect the results of the voting.
«The violations have been recorded. They were not widespread and significant to influence the result of the election. They were mostly technical errors," said Dmitry Linter.
