On the philosophy of candidate and party list registration

Lyubarev A.E.

Abstract

The paper discusses conceptual issues related to the registration of candidates through collecting signatures of voters. The author observes that the institution of registration by signature collection is at a dead end, and in order to find a way out of the dead end, it is necessary to revise many of the provisions that served as its foundation. The objectives of the registration procedures are analyzed in the paper, along with the compliance of the existing practices of signature collection and verification with these objectives. As a result, it is proposed to change the principle of collecting signatures for large constituencies, so that the initiative would belong to the voters themselves. Another proposal is to reduce the required number of signatures and change the rules for verifying them. The paper concludes with reference to the need for a comprehensive revision of the relevant section of the electoral legislation.

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V.S.Kovin's paper [4] and the virtual roundtable [1] on the registration of candidates and party lists through voter signatures provide plenty of food for thought. Some authors expressly suggest the need to change the “philosophy” (concept) of candidate registration. Indeed, we may observe that the institution of registration by signature collection is at a dead end, and in order to find a way out of the dead end, it is necessary to revise many of the provisions that served as its foundation. The present paper is my attempt to suggest ways out of the dead end, and it draws on the virtual roundtable and my earlier works [3; 6; 11; 7].

Filtering out the weak, or identifying the strong?

V.S.Kovin tries to contrast two goals of registration procedures: to filter out weak candidates and to validate the political claims of strong ones [4]. A.V.Rybin contrasts approaches to registration in a different manner by separating the restrictive approach (i.e. aimed at filtering out weak candidates) from the liberal approach [1].

While I identify a quantitative difference between the restrictive and liberal approach, I was unable to see if there was a qualitative difference between the two. As for the goals, again, I see no grounds for opposing them, as they are two sides of the same coin.

Indeed, both statements refer to distinguishing between strong and weak candidates. Except one focuses on the weak and the other on the strong. However, had there been no task of filtering out the weak candidates, the strong candidates would not have needed to prove the validity of their political claims.

In one of my earlier papers, I wrote that if no large number of candidates is expected, then no filters are needed, and everyone should be registered [7]. My colleagues are correct in their observations that often the number of those wishing to become candidates is too large, and this makes elections “unmanageable”, leads to “pointless inflation of the ballot”, “turns the electoral process into a Hyde Park”, creates difficulties for voters to determine their will, i.e. does not contribute to the realization of electoral rights, but prevents it [1].

In these cases, it is necessary to distinguish the strong candidates from the weak ones. Strong candidates (i.e., those able to garner substantial voter support at the polls) should be placed on the ballot, while weak candidates (i.e., those unable to garner such support) should be denied this right.

However, this raises a number of questions. One such question is: what do we mean by substantial support? We will try to answer this question later. The other question is of philosophical nature and is reminiscent of the famous dilemma of criminal law. And the answer is apparently similar: it is better to register ten (well, let it be not ten, but five) weak candidates than to deny registration to one strong candidate. It might be that this is what V.S.Kovin had in mind when he argued for his statement on the purposes of registration.

Currently, there is a situation when many weak candidates pass the registration filters and strong candidates are rejected [6; 10: 490-491; 14: 66-67, 265; 16], and such a situation strongly contrasts with the constitutional goals of registration procedures. There are certainly political reasons here that cannot be addressed by legislative measures alone. Nevertheless, I believe that this situation developed, among other things, as a result of incorrect, misguided legislative regulation.

Any registration procedures need to be tested in terms of whether they are fit for purpose. For example, the election deposit fulfills this purpose, but not in every case, and only when it is returned to a candidate who passes a certain threshold, such as receiving more than 5% of the vote. This threshold is the criterion that distinguishes the strong from the weak: strong candidates do not spend money, but only deposit it for a short period of time, while the weak have to shell out money to participate in elections.

Now, does collecting voter signatures fulfill this purpose? We will try to answer this question in the following section.

Collecting voter signatures: how a beautiful idea turned into something else entirely

Voter signature collection in Russia was pioneered in the 1991 presidential election. It has been in widespread use since the fall of 1993. The idea was quite well-intentioned: if a candidate is able to collect the required number of signatures, then he or she has the support of the voters, if not, then he or she does not.

But very soon experts became convinced that this was not the case. For example, in the 1995 State Duma elections, 16 electoral associations and blocs (out of 43) received less than 200,000 votes, i.e. obviously less than the number of signatures they collected. Whatever the reason for this phenomenon, the fact is clear: having 200,000 signatures does not guarantee that at least as many voters (0.3% of the total number of voters) will vote for the list. We then were able to see this kind of phenomenon manifest in many elections.

And one of the reasons for it that was quickly pointed out was the falsification ("whip-up") of signatures. I personally encountered this phenomenon for the first time in the same 1995 State Duma elections - in a single-seat constituency where I was a CoEC member. One of the candidates was very bad at forging signatures, it was obvious, we interviewed a small number of voters, made sure that they had not signed for him, and refused to register the candidate [9: 182-184]. Yet it became clear that if the signatures were whipped up with more skill, the CoEC members would hardly detect it. As soon as 1997, CEC Secretary A.A.Veshnyakov wrote about mass signature forgery in his monograph [15: 71-72].

Lawmakers have since been concerned about combating signature fraud. I remember how every year the rules for collecting signatures and verifying them got stricter and stricter. Almost all the regulations that my colleagues [1] justly criticize emerged for a reason, with the goal of preventing fraud and/or facilitating its detection. They did not reach the said goal, however. On the contrary, the greater the number of such regulations became, the easier it became to reject properlycollected signatures (since errors, misspellings, and blotches were inevitable when collecting signatures in person), while skillfully forged signatures were still difficult or almost impossible to detect.

We later came to recognize another reason why the number of signatures collected is not indicative of support for a candidate. The reason has to do with technological and psychological factors. The established technology was collecting signatures through door-to-door canvassing of citizens. Nice young people working a part-time job ring the doorbell. Why not help them in their part-time job? Especially since getting them out the door may not be much easier than letting them copy your passport details and then putting down your signature with the date. It turned out that it was possible to collect signatures for an unknown candidate, even easier than for a known candidate, for whom some people might not be willing to sign.

The principle of signature collection needs to be changed

The issues outlined above are particularly pronounced in large constituencies, where large numbers of signatures need to be collected and a large number of collectors are involved. I therefore believe that the traditional procedure of collecting signatures can be retained for smaller constituencies. In the draft Electoral Code of the Russian Federation, we considered the threshold to be constituencies with 50 thousand voters, where, based on the standard of 1%, it is necessary to collect 500 signatures [3: 98-99]. Whether this threshold should be lowered or raised is a matter for discussion. The main idea is that in larger constituencies the principle of collecting signatures should undergo a fundamental change.

The draft Electoral Code proposed to collect signatures in specially designated rooms under the supervision of election commission members. More recently, the idea of collecting signatures through electronic services emerged [12]. Virtual roundtable discussion produced some more alternatives [1].

The main difference between these alternatives and traditional signature collection is that in this case the initiative belongs to the voters, i.e. it is not the collector who goes to the voters, but the voters to the collector (or there is no collector at all, with an electronic service acting as an intermediary). And in this case it will be possible to consider that the voter has put his or her signature precisely because he or she wants to see this candidate on the ballot and allows the possibility of voting for him or her. Of course, there are still dangers of bribery and collective administration-driven voting, but they must be dealt with by other methods.

At the same time, the possibility of signatures being whipped up en masse is minimized, if not eliminated. The question of how to safeguard against tampering with e-collection should be addressed to the relevant professionals. In case of e-collection I shall point out only one fundamental difference from the REV: there is no need to ensure the secrecy of the expression of will. Therefore, verification is possible. And in the case of collecting signatures in special rooms under the supervision of election commission members, you can see that actual people who come to affix their signatures.

Each of these two methods has its disadvantages. If they are combined, giving the voter a choice, the disadvantages are virtually eliminated. One can also try combining them with some of the other ways suggested by the experts. The main objective is to avoid duplication, which is quite possible in terms of today's technological environment.

The main idea of V.S.Kovin's paper [4] is that support for a candidate's nomination can be provided in different forms, and it is necessary to give the candidate an opportunity to use all these forms, eventually summarizing all the results. In itself, this is a sensible idea; the only question is whether it is technically viable to use all possible forms (including, for example, spoken public statements).

At the virtual roundtable, V.S.Kovin went further, suggesting that public support from elected politicians who themselves had previously received support from voters should reduce the established number of voter “signatures” [1]. Now, this is a proposal that is problematic from an equal suffrage standpoint, since elected politicians can represent the same voters who put in their signatures, and it is virtually impossible to separate them.

Nevertheless, the question of whether elected politicians (or only deputies, who are by definition representatives of voters) may support candidates remains. In Russia, this idea has been implemented in gubernatorial elections in the form of a municipal filter, but the results of its implementation were so messy that most experts reject it [11: 141-145]. However, this idea has its advantages, first of all, for presidential elections (it is not by chance that it was implemented in France), where even 0.1% of the number of voters means 100 thousand signatures, which are technically quite difficult to collect, but even more difficult to check qualitatively in a short period of time.

If we set aside the deliberately excessive parameters of the current municipal filter (high percentage, geographical coverage, dual signature ban), the main issue of the deputy filter is establishing a fair value for a deputy's vote. Even with regard to municipal deputies, I do not think it is appropriate that the vote of a deputy of a rural settlement should be equal to the vote of a deputy of a metropolitan city. And if signature collection of regional deputies and State Duma deputies is allowed (and I see no reason not to allow it), then the equality of votes becomes all the more problematic. I believe that setting the value of the vote artificially, “by eye”, brings little else other than harm. The only option that seems acceptable to me is to base the value on the number of votes received by the deputy in the election, as proposed in the draft Electoral Code [3: 94, 421-422].

How many signatures should be required?

As one of the participants in the virtual roundtable rightly pointed out, many quantitative standards in our laws are arbitrary and lack any serious objective basis. However, such a situation is unacceptable. Any quantitative standards in laws require justification involving insights from sociology, political science, psychology, etc., at least on the basis of empirical data [8].

There is a recommendation from the Venice Commission not to demand anything more than 1% [13: 333]. I am not sure how well-founded this recommendation is; we can only assume that it is based on analyzing the experience of different countries.

As I stated earlier, the idea behind signature collection is that if a candidate is able to collect the required number of signatures, then he or she has the support of the voters. But does this formula imply that a candidate is supported by as many (roughly as many) voters as have signed up for him or her?

No, because the idea is precisely that the actual support for a candidate should be many times higher than the number of signatures he or she submits. Otherwise, the required number would have to be at least 5%, not 1%. It is simply not possible for a candidate to collect the signatures of everyone who sympathizes with him or her in the short time period allowed for signature collection. In addition, there are many people who remain undecided during the signature collection period, and a substantial part of them are not ready to sign for anyone they do not know. Furthermore, an important factor is that a signature (unlike a vote) cannot be secret; the fact of signing a signature becomes known to a large number of people in any case. This fact implies that not everyone is prepared to express clear preference for one candidate or another. V.S.Kovin suggests publishing lists of signatories [4], and this suggestion is reasonable, but then the number of signatures should be reduced all the more.

There is even more reason to reduce the number of signatures if the procedure for collecting them is changed, if we follow the principle that voters must take the initiative (as discussed in the previous section). In this case, an even smaller proportion of voters will be willing to sign, and that has to be taken into account.

Another reason for reducing the number of signatures is the need for better quality verification. The practice of verifying a large number of signatures under time constraints posed several serious challenges. One of them is the violation of the principle of equality of candidates, when the signatures of some candidates are subjected to meticulous verification (sometimes excessively so), while the signatures of others virtually pass unverified. The second challenge is the neglect of the validity of decisions to declare a signature misleading or invalid, which is particularly characteristic of handwriting experts' conclusions. The third challenge is that a candidate has too little time to prove the validity of rejected signatures when there are quite a few of them.

On signature verification

Virtual roundtable participants are correct in observing that signature verification has become a procedure disconnected from the constitutional meaning of candidate registration based on voters' signatures [1]. It is time to try and restore its original purpose.

The main point to be checked is whether the data included in the signature list can be used to properly identify the voter, whether he or she is a voter of the given constituency, and whether he or she actually affixed his or her signature (i.e. supports the nomination of the candidate). However, what emerges are other, more controversial motives. Could it be that the principle of equality of candidates violated during signature collection (one such violation may be the collection of signatures before the official nomination of a candidate), and is it certain there was no voter fraud (in particular, by distorting information about the candidate in the header of the signature list), coercion and bribery during signature collection?

Virtually all reasons for invalidating a signature involve, to one degree or another, attempts to counter these violations. Formalizing the procedure resulted in the fact that the existence of these justifications became more important than the detection of actual violations. For example, incomplete data of a voter's address may prevent his or her identification, but such violation is often a perceived one, and the voter can be easily identified, for example, when the subject of the Russian Federation, district, etc. is not specified. The issue of entering incorrect data about the candidate in the signature list is substituted by checking the compliance of the form of the signature list with the requirements of the law, which has resulted in a large set of absurd claims.

In practice, attempts to verify whether a voter was identifiable turned out to be inadequate. Such verification comes in several stages. First, members of the election commission (or its working group) check the data from the signature sheets against the voter register. In case of any inconsistencies, they submit a request to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, get a response, and if the response confirms the inconsistency, it provides reasons for the election commission to invalidate the signature.

There are several possible reasons for the perceived inconsistency. One such reason is errors in the register and the database of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, or not even errors per se, but discrepancies caused by name changes that are not reflected in a citizen's passport. Another reason is inaccuracies in the inquiry caused either by misreading the record done in poor handwriting, errors due to carelessness of the verification specialist, and deliberate misrepresentations. As a result, the perceived inconsistencies can become quite large in volume, and the candidate has too little time to prove the correctness of the data in its entirety [16].

However, what should be considered the most inadequate aspect is the verification of signature sheets with the help of handwriting experts. The stated purpose of such verification is to detect signature fraud. However, this purpose fails to be achieved and, most likely, cannot be achieved, with the current procedure promoting almost unlimited arbitrariness instead. We should point out that in a number of cases it was handwriting experts who rejected most of the signatures: this was the case, for example, with Ilya V. Yashin and Lyubov E. Sobol in the 2019 Moscow City Duma election [16].

First, handwriting experts simply do not have enough data for thorough examination. Therefore, they cannot assess whose hand the signature is in. As a result, the number of signatures considered as misleading (i.e., executed on behalf of the voter by another person) is usually small and, more often than not, amounts to zero. Prior to 2020, handwriting experts mostly identified "date chains," that is, lines of signature sheets where the dates of signature entry were allegedly made by the same hand.

In 2020, a regulation was passed stipulating that the voter's last, first and patronymic names shall be entered by hand. The rationale was that the handwriting expert receives a sample of handwriting on the basis of which he or she will be able to verify whether the signature corresponds with this sample. In actuality, the handwriting expert merely gained the ability to reject signatures on "circumstantial" grounds, in this case, on the basis of allegations that the last, first and patronymic names were not handwritten.

Second, the actual handwriting expert analysis is a very labor intensive process. In conditions when a handwriting expert has to check hundreds or even thousands of signatures in a short span time, such examination becomes little but else but a spectacle. At the same time, the law refers to expert opinion, but in practice the opinion is simply the expert's signature under the statement that the signature (or several signatures) is invalid or misleading. Obviously, such an empty claim cannot be regarded as a conclusion. We drew attention to this back in 2008 [5: 111-115]. Our opponents repeatedly referred to the opinion of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, according to which handwriting examination is not subject to the requirements established by the legislation on forensic examination [1; 16]. Given the heavy workload of experts, I believe that it can be allowed that expert opinions are not as detailed as required by the forensic science regulations, but it is necessary that the opinions contain rationales that can be verified.

The lack of rationale in this situation turns out to be not a weakness, but a strength of "concluding statements" of handwriting experts. Unsubstantiated conclusions turn out to be impossible to refute by any means. This shows that, unlike signatures rejected on other grounds, nobody managed to “take back” the signatures rejected by handwriting experts (not counting those rare situations when a handwriting expert rejected a non-existent signature) [16].

In this connection, it is worth paying attention once again to the secrecy of the methodology used by handwriting experts who examine signature sheets [1] and emphasizing that such secrecy in cases concerning the realization of citizens' electoral rights is completely unacceptable.

Third, it is also necessary to pay attention to the substitution of justifications that experts typically allow. Since the law states that a signature is invalidated if the date is not handwritten by the voter, the handwriting expert's assertion that the two dates were written in the same hand cannot be considered a legal basis for invalidating either signature (we may compare this case to the "two hunters precedent" from criminal law).

There are a few other considerations about "date chains". As experts point out, individual traits in the writing of numbers are fewer than those in the writing of letters. Mathematicians have already made an estimate: there is a high probability that among five thousand people there will be two people with identical spelling of numbers. Moreover, psychologists tell us is that number writing patterns are developed in childhood, and in learning to write numbers, children very often imitate their math teachers. Should we be surprised if it turns out that people living in the same neighborhood write numbers the same way?

Nevertheless, the presence of long chains of dates with characteristic writing of numbers can be considered an indirect sign of signature forgery. However, it is indicative that in signature lists of some candidates for Moscow City Duma who were denied registration, the prevailing pattern was “chains” of two dates (paired chains) [16]. The presence of a large number of paired chains is difficult to explain by anything other than errors (or arbitrariness) of handwriting experts. After all, if signatures are indeed forged, one and the same hand affixes a large number of both signatures and dates. And the assumption that one voter put a date for himself and someone else (unless it is a relative) is absurd.

There is yet another important point. As was noted earlier, verifying signature sheets is a labor-intensive process. At the same time, there are often reasonable suspicions that signature sheets of different candidates are examined with different degrees of thoroughness [2: 699-708; 16]. In order to ensure that the principle of equality of candidates is respected, it is necessary to develop time standards, as is the rule for any technological process. Based on such standards, decisions should be made both on the number of experts to be involved in the examination and verification process and on whether to carry out a full or random examination (if the law allows random examination).

On invalid and misleading signatures

N.I.Vorobyev and D.M.Khudoley discuss how excluding the concept of "invalid signature" from the legislation is a worthwhile endeavor. This thesis is justified both from the terminological ("what recognized as invalid in legal practice includes not the signatures on documents themselves, but legal acts, documents, transactions, etc.") and substantive points of view [1]. I will not discuss the terminological issue here and will only comment on the substance.

We have already discussed the reasons for rejecting signatures. One is signature forgery, in which case the signature must be recognized as misleading. However, the bureaucratization of the procedure brought about strange consequences here as well. For instance, if a verification using the database of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reveals that the voter who allegedly put his or her signature is deceased (before the date of signature), such a signature is usually recognized as invalid, since by law only a handwriting expert may declare the signature misleading. However, logically, such a signature should be considered invalid, since a deceased person could not have put it.

However, there are other reasons. Among such reasons are signatures put by citizens who belong to other constituencies, putting a signature earlier than the starting date of signature collection, the inability to properly identify a voter. In these cases, there is no forgery, or it is unproven (so the signature cannot be recognized as misleading), but such a signature should not be counted. It has to be qualified somehow, and for such cases the concept of "invalid signature" seems to me quite acceptable.

It is a different matter that, as D.M.Khudoley correctly pointed out, in the case of electronic signature collection it is possible to completely eliminate such violations and errors, and then there will be neither invalid nor misleading signatures.

In earlier papers, I suggested that it is necessary to set different thresholds for invalid and misleading signatures [3: 100; 11: 157-159]. This suggestion is firstly justified by the different labor intensity of signature verification for invalid and misleading ones, and secondly, by the varying severity of violations.

Thus, any invalid signature is the result of errors, which are nearly always unintentional. A misleading, that is, forged signature is the result of an offense under the Criminal Code. It would be wrong to impose the same consequences for such different offenses.

This question is related to another: is it possible to conduct sampled verification? And, in my opinion, the answer to this question may (or even should) be different for invalid and misleading signatures.

On the one hand, signature examination for invalid ones is a much less labor-intensive process than that for misleading ones. On the other hand, the only thing that can be inferred from a sampled verification is the likelihood that a candidate does not have enough valid signatures. I believe that the question of a citizen's exercise of passive suffrage cannot be decided on the basis of presumptive considerations. I would like to point out that my mathematician colleagues do not fully agree with this thesis, noting that the probability of sampling error is easy to calculate [1]. However, as we know from theory, such a calculation is possible only in the case of equally possible events. And when selecting signatures for verification, we are unsure if such an equal possibility exists, especially if the whole signature sheets are selected rather than the signatures themselves, since the percentage of rejects is likely to vary from collector to collector.

I therefore believe that rejection of invalid signatures cannot be selective, and a candidate can be denied registration only if there are not enough valid signatures.

The situation is different with inaccurate signatures. Every misleading signature is a result of a criminal offense. If there is a certain number of such signatures, even if small, it is a serious reason not to trust a candidate. And in this case, the refusal to register him or her will not be based on the fact that he or she collected an insufficient number of signatures (as in the case of invalid signatures) — it will be a sanction for a crime, even the offender is among the people who acted in the candidate's interests.

Some colleagues point out that the candidate should not suffer because of violations committed by the collectors [1]. It is difficult to fully agree with such statements. If the collectors as a whole fail to collect the required number of valid signatures, then the candidate fails to meet the requirements of the law and cannot be registered. If a certain marked proportion of forged signatures is detected among the collected signatures (the size of such a proportion is a matter for discussion), this is a reason to distrust a candidate: at the very least, it means that there are people in his or her team who are capable of criminal offense.

Another matter is that the law should allow a candidate to independently identify both errors in signature sheets and forged signatures. In this case, it is important both to reduce the number of signatures to be collected (as discussed above) and to provide opportunities for verification, as was pointed out by my colleagues [1].

On spare signatures

In all changes to the election law, two quantitative norms have always been the same: the allowed proportion of invalid and misleading signatures and the allowed surplus of submitted signatures. At first both proportions amounted to 15%, then to 25%, later to 10% and finally to 5%.

There seems to be a logic in such a equation: if a candidate submitted the required number of signatures plus an excess of n%, and the election commission rejected more than n% of signatures, there are two reasons for immediate rejection: exceeding the allowed proportion of defective signatures and insufficient number of valid signatures.

Admittedly, from the strictly mathematical perspective, this is incorrect. Let us take a look at a specific graphic example. Suppose 1000 valid signatures are required to be submitted for registration and the allowed defect rate and allowed surplus is 5%, i.e. 50 signatures. The candidate submits 1,050 signatures. The Election Commission verifies all signatures submitted. If it rejects 51 signatures, the number of signatures recognized as valid is insufficient (999). And the proportion of rejected signatures will nevertheless remain within the limit (51 / 1050 = 4.86%).

In other words, the regulation on allowable surplus is a stricter one, allowing registration to be denied even if the reject proportion is less than allowed. It therefore turns out that the regulation on exceeding the allowed proportion of defective signatures is redundant in case of blanket verification, and can work only in case of sampled one.

If we still want to account for the mathematical regularity noted here, then the regulation on allowed surplus of signatures should be slightly higher than the regulation on allowed proportion of rejected signatures. However, it is quite reasonable that my colleagues suggest changes that are more radical. In particular, there are proposals not to limit the number of submitted signatures at all [1].

This restriction arose from concerns that election commissions would have to verify too many signatures. My colleagues suggest quite a reasonable approach: to verify signatures until the required number of valid signatures is reached [1]. From the point of view of the purpose of signature-based registration, this is the correct approach. However, it may lead to some issues.

This approach may work well in the case of a candidate with a relatively small proportion of rejected signatures. If, say, this proportion is 12%, then, having checked 114% of signatures, the election commission will arrive at the required number of valid signatures.

But now let us imagine a candidate who submits, say, a three-fold surplus of signatures, but the vast majority of them turn out to be invalid. In the above approach, all signatures submitted will have to be verified. It is even conceivable that a candidate would purposely submit a large number of signatures so that the commission would not have the resources to reject them all. It is likely that this issue is purely theoretical, however. For if the vast majority of signatures are rejected, they are rejected for some easily identifiable reason, and it will not be too labor intensive. There is still the danger of presenting a large surplus of whipped-up signatures. But such a danger is an argument in favor of the sampled examination for signature fraud and the small allowed proportion of such signatures that I suggested earlier.

There is one more issue. Let us imagine that the working group did not verify all signatures and found a sufficient number of valid signatures. However, at the meeting of the election commission there were reasonable claims to some of the signatures recognized as valid, and the election commission rejected them. In this case, an additional number of signatures has to be verified, and there may no longer be time to do so. Although this issue is also likely to be theoretical, it is preferable that it is provided for in the law.

Voter canvassing as a way to verify the validity of signatures

I have already mentioned that in the 1995 State Duma elections, the DEC where I was a member conducted a voter survey and used it to detect forged signatures. The law did not prohibit it at the time. Seven years later, signature verification by survey was banned following a motion by deputy A.I.Saliy. This was in response to abusive practice when surveys were sometimes conducted with police involvement and frightened citizens began to renounce their actual signatures. My colleagues who now reject this method [1] are obviously concerned about such practice returning.

There are other considerations. The election commission is not a court: its activities are not so strictly regulated, its interrogators do not pledge to tell only the truth and are not liable for false testimony. It turns out that the commission's decision cannot be based on voter testimony. At any rate, the decision to declare the signature misleading. The situation is less restrictive regarding the decision to recognize a signature as valid if the voter's testimony is confronted with arguments of doubt (e.g., a handwriting expert's report) and the election commission bases its decision on a presumption of validity.

Perhaps the solution is that the decision to recognize signatures as misleading if they exceed the limit should be confirmed by the court, as provided for in our draft Electoral Code [3: 101, 265].

As for the testimony of voters whose signatures are challenged during the legal process, this practice has already been established. The only question is what such testimony should confirm. If a voter confirms that he or she signed in his or her own hand, such evidence should be compelling to the court when there are no obvious discrepancies between the signatures on the signature sheet and in the passport. The voter's claim that he or she put the date in his or her own hand is less reliable, however. Since signatures are much more likely to be rejected based on the fact that the date is not written by the voter (and now also based on the fact that the name is not written by the voter's own hand), there is logic in the court's ruling in this case. It is simply a matter of repealing such reasons.

Conclusion

We can once again see that the issue of remedying the situation with candidate registration is a complex one and requires a substantial revision of the relevant section of the legislation.

It goes without saying that this problem is made more complicated by political factors, i.e. the desire of the government officials to manually operate the registration process, preventing dangerous persons from getting on the ballot. And no progress is possible without a change of the political trajectory. However, changing the political trajectory alone is unlikely to make much difference, since the legislation already contains repressive regulations and their application is even more repressive. These regulations will have to be changed dramatically.

The major measures to remedy the legislation were outlined in our draft Electoral Code 2011 [3]. Now they can be developed and supplemented with new ideas prompted by practice (e.g., collecting signatures through electronic services) and experts [1; 4].

As far as practice is concerned, it will have to be organized from scratch. Here it is important that not only legislators, but also law enforcers (election commissions and courts) perceive the need for a paradigm shift: it should be based on constitutional provisions, according to which human rights and freedoms "determine the meaning, content and application of laws, the activities of legislative and executive authorities, local self-government and are ensured by public justice" [7].

At the same time, in the electoral legislation itself it is desirable to directly enshrine a number of principles previously formulated by the judiciary, as it is done in the draft Electoral Code: the principle of proportionality of the sanction to the offense, application of the sanction only if the candidate is guilty. One should also add to this the principle that irresolvable doubts are interpreted in favor of the registration of a candidate [3: 238]. These principles may be important in controversial cases, including for the court. Naturally, they must also be supported by specific provisions of law.

Received 18.04.2024, revision received 22.04.2024.

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References

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