Head of Russian Central Election Committee briefs president on preparations for Duma elections

Head of the Russian Central Election Committee Alexander Veshnyakov has briefed Vladimir Putin on preparations for the elections to the State Duma due at the end of the year. The country has completed "a comprehensible improvement of the election legislation," he said at a meeting with the Russian President on Friday.

The main goal is to increase the role and responsibility of political parties, he pointed out. Apart from this, it is necessary to eliminate different negative notions witnessed during previous elections. "The most important is to create additional mechanisms of public control over the election's results so that there is no doubt in their outcome," Veshnyakov emphasized. "These tasks have been solved judicially", he said, and, besides, at the forthcoming elections "a new programme will be implemented that will allow to transfer date automatically, without the human factor".

For the first time Russia will use the practice of posting vote protocols from the country's all 94,000 electoral districts at the site of the election committees of each constituent member of the Federation within 24 hours after the voting, Veshnyakov announced. Head of the CEC supported the proposal of several Russian parties about using the following scheme. Observers at each electoral district in the presence of witnesses receive a final document, a protocol of the election committee, and the day after the election they compare the data with those posted on the web-site. "If there are any mistakes, they will be found at one and thus there will not be any doubt about the election's results," Veshnyakov assured.

The parties are actively getting ready for the elections and have introduced an initiative of signing an agreement on correct election campaign, he said. A corresponding organizing committee has already been set up of parties' representatives, journalist associations and political experts, he added.

"Our goal is to ensure the elections are conducted in compliance with law, which means not to overstep the moral line which is, unfortunately, sometimes overstepped," the CEC head said at the meeting with the Russian leader.