Russia's ‘municipal filter’ locks out the candidate who probably won Primorye's invalidated September gubernatorial election

He needed signatures from at least 140 municipal deputies to make the ballot, and he submitted paperwork with 147 endorsements, but Andrey Ishchenko has come up short in Russia’s Primorsky Krai, after election officials tossed out thirteen signatures.

In a runoff gubernatorial race held this September, Ishchenko was leading at the polls until a suspicious last-minute surge by the incumbent. The results were later invalidated and a new election is now scheduled for December 16, but the Communist Party (Ishchenko’s party) decided not to field a candidate in protest. He decided to run anyway as an independent, but that means he needed to pass Russia’s “municipal filter.” Election officials will finalize the ballot on November 24.

Why were 13 signatures scratched off Ishchenko’s list? According to officials, 11 of the municipal deputies who endorsed him had already endorsed another candidate in the race. Another two people who signed his paperwork apparently are not actually municipal deputies.