Moscow Times
December 16, 2005
Elections Chief Touts New Way of Voting
By Francesca Mereu
Staff Writer
Central Elections Commission chief Alexander Veshnyakov trumpeted on Thursday a pilot project that would allow voters to pick candidates from party lists to serve as their legislators.
But the project -- which will be tested for the first time Sunday in Tver regional legislative elections -- will not penalize parties whose candidates refuse to take their seats, an election official said.
Currently, voters pick a political party on the ballot, and the top candidates on that party's list get seats. Parties have drawn criticism for topping their lists with popular politicians who have had no intention of taking seats. For example, Mayor Yury Luzhkov ran at the top of United Russia's list in Moscow City Duma elections on Dec. 4 but later turned down his seat.
Under the Tver project, seats will be distributed among the party-list candidates who get the most votes, Veshnyakov said during a visit to the city of Tver on Thursday.
"In my opinion, this system is really fair," he told reporters, Interfax reported.
"Citizens will get the chance to choose not only the party but the specific member of the party whom they trust most, giving him or her the chance to become a deputy," Veshnyakov said.
But Olga Olenikova, a legal expert with the Tver regional elections commission, said an elected candidate would still be able to refuse a seat and a person further down the party list would be awarded the seat.
"If a candidate refuses to take the seat, this goes to the next candidate on the list," Olenikova said.
The top candidate on United Russia's list in Sunday's vote is Tver Governor Dmitry Zelenin.
Tver's legislature will be split between party-list candidates (17 seats) and candidates running in single-mandate districts (16 seats).