Kuban voters claim being forced to vote at work

In Kuban, public sector employees and workers of enterprises are being forced to detach themselves from the polling stations at their places of residence and to vote at their places of work, which makes it possible to control the voter turnout, members of political parties claim.

Pavel Sokolenko, the head of the election headquarters of the regional branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), claims that public sector employees and workers of enterprises are being forced to detach from the polling stations at their places of residence and to vote at their places of work. Thus, there is no need to organize the transportation of voters, and during the working day, they will go to the polling stations and vote for “required” candidates, Pavel Sokolenko believes.

David Kankiya, a member of the Council of the “Golos” (Vote) movement*, told the “Caucasian Knot” correspondent that the Krasnodar Territory takes the fourth place in terms of the number of complaints about violations committed during the election campaign, and in total, 90 reports of violations were received during the election campaign. According to David Kankiya, all appeals can be divided into two groups: violation of pre-election campaigning and abuse of administrative resources during campaigning.

As an example, David Kankiya mentions a report that employees of the Krasnodar Musical Theatre are being forced to vote at a nearby polling station located at the Puppet Theatre. “This is done in order to control their turnout. And something like that is taking place everywhere. There are messages from all over the Krasnodar Territory reporting that public sector employees are being forced to vote at other polling stations. This is done to control voting,” David Kankiya said.

* The organization is included by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) of Russia in the register of NCOs performing the functions of a foreign agent.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on September 16, 2021 at 04:58 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.