Members of a local electoral commission empty a ballot box at a polling station after a national vote on constitutional reforms in Moscow on July 1, 2020.
ALEXANDER NEMENOV
The Russians have voted overwhelmingly in favor of changes to the country’s constitution that allow President Vladimir Putin to potentially remain in power until 2036.
With all the votes counted, the electoral commission said Thursday morning that the final count showed that 77.9% of those who voted were in favor of the amendments to the Russian constitution and 21.2% against it, the state agency reported. of RIA Novosti news. The data showed that voter turnout was 65%, the commission said.
The constitutional amendments covered a number of issues ranging from the minimum wage and pensions, to giving Putin the right to run for two more than six years in office. The current 67-year term ends in 2024.
The vote on the constitutional amendments was announced as a referendum, but in reality the changes had already been approved by the Russian parliament and the public vote was seen as a movement to legitimize the amendments. Putin has not yet explicitly stated that he will run for office again.
Critics of the Kremlin say the vote was neither transparent nor conducted according to customary electoral standards; Ballot boxes were established in conventional polling stations, but also on sidewalks and in fields and parks.
Some voters, those in Moscow and the Nizhny Novgorod region, were able to vote online, and the votes were also cast from abroad. A Russian cosmonaut even voted from space when parked on the International Space Station. Controversially, voters were also offered incentives, with reports of prizes at stake.
However, Russia’s electoral commission rejected the allegations of wrongdoing, saying on Twitter that it had received few complaints and had taken steps to avoid double voting, adding that the voter lists would be verified and verified.
Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a televised address to the nation in Russia’s Tver region on June 30, 2020.
MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV
Opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who harshly criticized the electoral procedure during the weeklong vote, called it illegitimate. “We will never recognize this result,” Navalny told his followers in a video, Reuters reported. Navalny said on Twitter that the opposition will focus its efforts on the regional elections later this year on its efforts to defeat the ruling United Russia party.
“The best reaction to what happened is not despair and anxiety, but the mobilization of thousands of observers this fall and the defeat of United Russia in regional elections, where at least some procedure remains,” Navalny tweeted.
Putin made a speech on Tuesday, on the eve of the last day of voting, asking Russians to vote, although he did not mention how the changes would amend the presidential office rules that “reset the clock” in Putin’s presidency.
“We are going to vote for the country where we want to live, with state-of-the-art education and medical care, a reliable system of social protection and an effective government that is accountable to the people,” he said in a national speech after unveiling a patriotic Monument to the Soviet soldiers.
“We are going to vote for a country for which we have been working and which we would like to pass on to our children and grandchildren.”
Putin has seen his popularity decline in recent months to around 60%, a far cry from the approval rating of almost 90% seen in mid-2015, according to the independent Levada center.
The president has come under fire for what some have described as a non-intervention approach to the pandemic: Russia has the third-highest number of cases in the world, with 653,479 infections reported to date and 9,521 deaths, according to data compiled by the University. Johns Hopkins.
.
