St Petersburg governor Valentina Matvienko, speaker of the town’s general court Vadim Tyulpanov (he is also the head of the United Russia’s Petersburg branch) and the chair of Central Elective Commission Vladimir Churov are delighted with high turnout and high figures of support given for Dmitry Medvedev in this city. Officially, 72% of votes were given for the new president.        

Below is an illustrating story telling how it was done.

On 2 March in St Petersburg the major part of the newspaper “Grazhdansky golos” correspondents - who had the right to be present at the voting and counting process and to receive the copies of the protocols - were not allowed to enter the polling stations. And almost all of those who managed to get inside were turned out of doors by the police. Very few of them were able to stay in and it’s exactly them who found out the most interesting facts.    

Olga Pokrovskaya is a well-known lawyer in St Petersburg, deputy chief of the judicial division at the municipal council “Grazhdanka”, also a member of St Petersburg bureau of Yabloko party. She has been working many years in the elective commissions and she has many times asserted citizen’s rights in the courts. At this election she was an observer at poll station #488 in Kirovsky district. She waited till the protocol was signed, and she got an official copy of the protocol. Then she suggested giving a ride to the members of the district elective commission to the Territorial Elective Commission #3 where all the protocols were to be submitted. In St Petersburg, it is common practice that such commissions are situated in the buildings of the city district administrations.     

“What put me on my guard first was the fact that besides the completed and signed protocol the district commission members also had a blank protocol with signatures and stamps on it” tells Mrs. Pokrovskaya. “On our arriving to the district administration we were met by some people who told us to go to a certain room, after learning which poll station we had come from. As for me, I was offered to make for the Territorial Commission room that had different location. Having sat there for a while, I decided to find out where the protocols had been brought instead of submitting them to the territorial commission for registration. On another floor I found seven rooms where district protocols were brought and processed behind the closed doors and only then handed to the territorial commission office. To my question of what had been going on there I was responded that they were checking the protocols before entering the data into the GAS Vybory (state automated electronic system containing the polling results). But, you know, the data are to be entered after being submitted to the territorial commission, and not before!”  

Soon Olga was approached by a deputy of the town’s general court, United Russia member, Vitaly Molchanov, who began to pressurize her. He alleged that she had got the district commission protocol by false pretences and that her newspaper’s certificate was false either. He also threatened to call the police. Mrs. Pokrovskaya responded calmly that her certificates were authentic and retorted that he, as a deputy, had no relation to the election at all, according to the law. Having noticed that Mr. Milonov was showing interest to her bag’s contents, Olga hid the received by her protocol more safely. Then the chair of the territorial commission Tatiana Koveshnikova asked her why she hadn’t been accredited by the City Election Commission. Mrs. Pokrovskaya responded that the law doesn’t require it. “I ask you to leave this place” said Mrs. Kaveshnikova then. So Olga had to leave. But before that she had understood why territorial commission’s reaction to her presence was so nervous.         

“There was a table hanging where data from the polling stations were entered” said Mrs. Pokrovskaya. “I noticed that the data for our polling station did not come to appear on that table and we had been among first to come. Along with that, comparing the data for other poll stations from our district already entered on the table, I found out they differed significantly from the figures in my initial protocol. Such a difference is just impossible for same territory. And when the data for poll station #488 appeared at last in the GAS Vybory display we all just opened the mouth: they differed like heaven and earth from the true figures” (see the table).  

That might be called a non-science fiction, but actually the good word for it is “impudent falsification”. Doctoring another 800 votes for Medvedev at the background of 620 votes received in reality – it must have taken a real effort to do it!

Usually, St Petersburg’s City Elective Commission states in such cases, “After receiving the copy of the protocol your observers just left. And later the district elective commission re-calculated the voting ballots one more time more precisely and drew up a finalized protocol”. But in the described case such explanation wouldn’t work. Reminding, Olga Pokrovskaya took the district commission members in her car to the territorial commission and no re-calculation was possible to be done in that case. And who can tell how 800 votes could have been “looked through” at the initial calculation!   

“I believe same methods were used in other poll stations” says Mrs. Pokrovskaya. “There were few observers, in my poll station, for example, I was the only one. The communists stated they would cover all the poll stations in the country, but their observers failed to attend many poll stations in St Petersburg. Under such circumstances, just an unlimited opportunity presented itself for making falsifications”.

P.S. Gennady Ziuganov, losing presidential contender from the Communist party, has sent a complaint about “bulk facts of offences - described in Articles 141, 142 and 142.1 of the Criminal Code of Russia – committed by chairs and secretaries of the district elective commissions” during 2 March election in Moscow. The complaint says that a number of poll stations made violations of the elective legislation causing the falsification of the true election outcomes.