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An election watchdog says some of Putin's candidacy endorsements were collected illegally

Source: Meduza

The “Golos” movement has published an investigation accusing an organization called “Victory Volunteers” of illegally using government facilities and state officials to collect candidacy endorsements for Vladimir Putin.

According to the report, in 40 of the 76 regions where “Victory Volunteers” is registered, its coordinators are active state officials (generally, these are officials tasked with overseeing local governments’ youth policies). As a rule, the group’s regional headquarters are typically based inside state facilities, including local universities. Federal law prohibitsgovernment agencies from participating in the collection of signatures for any candidate.

Responding to the allegations, a spokesperson for “Victory Volunteers” said the group’s headquarters in Moscow isn’t on government property, and implied that Golos is wrong about its various regional headquarters. The organization also claimed that state officials are allowed to participate in its work in their off time. “Victory Volunteers” says it was not formally involved in the effort to collect signatures endorsing Vladimir Putin’s re-election campaign. (Election laws ban legal entities from helping candidates for free.)

How did Putin’s endorsement drive go?

As an independent candidate, he needed to collect 300,000 signatures. Putin submitted 1.6 million. Election officials only threw out 0.39 percent of them. According to the budget numbers released by Putin’s campaign, this means he spent 13.89 rubles (about $0.25) on each endorsement.

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