Moscow court rejects first of 32 Communist Party lawsuits over electronic voting results

Moscow’s Presnensky District Court threw out the first lawsuit filed by the Communist Party (KPRF) in an attempt to challenge the results of electronic voting in the capital in the 2021 State Duma elections.

“The court didn’t find grounds for satisfying the claim of KPRF member Andrey Grebennik,” the court’s press service told the state news agency TASS on Thursday, October 21. 

The ruling has not yet come into force and may be challenged at the Moscow City Court.

In total, 32 administrative claims from the KPRF were sent to the Presnensky District Court in a bid to annul the results of electronic voting in Moscow. The court is to consider a first batch of five claims on Thursday. 

After the votes were tallied in September’s State Duma elections, the Communist Party accused the authorities of rigging the electronic voting results in Moscow. Though several KPRF candidates were leading by a wide margin in the capital’s single-mandate constituencies, they lost the elections to candidates backed by the Mayor’s Office after the online ballots were counted. In response, the KPRF staged small protests on September 20 and 25, prompting a sweeping police crackdown in the days that followed.

On October 1, a technical team from Moscow’s Election Monitoring Public Committee announced that their audit found no confirmation of electronic voting violations in the capital.