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Introduction
Questions of ballot access present some of the more important issues that need to be resolved by the election laws and administrative regulations of a political jurisdiction in advance of the determination of the victor(s) and/or allocation of the seats in an executive or legislative body.1 Issues of ballot access entail legally - based and practical resolution of the following kinds of questions, two of which normally receive priority consideration in the international literature devoted to discussion of the relationships between voting and democracy;
(a) Requirements for candidates to demonstrate appropriate levels of support from their prospective voters by obtaining a qualifying number of signatures within the political jurisdiction where they intend to be candidates.
(b) Resolution of practical yet philosophically and politically significant issues such as the mechanisms and rationale for different treatment of individual or independent candidates versus candidates put forward by political parties or other civic associations. These entities may be created on an ad hoc basis for a particular election. However, more typically, they are political organizations already in existence and they have often played long term and important roles in the political life of their locality, region, or country.
Within and cutting across these broad categories of inquiry, some of the questions that can arise include: what are appropriate procedural differentiations (especially in Presidential systems) for executive branch versus legislative branch elections? what are the advantages and disadvantages of a given method for national (federal) as distinct from regional or local election regulation? and what, if any, are appropriate registration fee and financial responsibility and accountability provisions for a particular country or system? Regardless of the country whose electoral provisions are being considered, all of these issues surface within the context of existing political systems, where self - interested actors and democratic values both cooperate and compete for advantages in an environment with rarely permanent, though often increasingly stable rules - of - the - game, as particular democracies become more politically mature.
Seen in comparative international perspective, the experience and evolution of the electoral framework of the Russian Federation since its birth in 1991 is not dissimilar from that of many other democracies at various stages of their political history. This broad generalization applies both to newly formed or reformed democracies and to those whose histories include various periods of relative political stability and of political confrontation and strife. Issues which have assumed prominence in Russia in the political debates and conflicts surrounding the 1993 and 1995 Duma election, the 1996 Presidential election, and the now ongoing 1996 - 1997 regional governorship (with resulting consequences for Federation Council composition), regional assembly, and local representative elections are not unique. They are the same general kinds of issues with which other democracies have frequently struggled.
What is the appropriate percentile balance between the single - member district and party list proportional representation allocation of seats became a question of first rank importance in the debates over whether the law for the Duma election should be changed between 1993 and 1995, To what extent and under what circumstances non - compliance with particular election law technical requirements should serve as the appropriate basis for the Central Election Commission (or the Supreme Court in review) to disqualify political blocs which may represent a significant fraction of political opinion in the country became a white - hot issue in the qualification or disqualification of the Yabloko (Yavlinsky) and Derzhava (Rutskoy) political blocs for the 1995 Duma election Federal list. Under what conditions should a candidate for the Russian Presidency be disqualified from the ballot because of a certain number of proven signature violations became an important issue for the candidacy of V.A.Bryntsalov for President in 1996. The first question is a relatively simple one of what is the law. The second and third, however, are more complicated questions mixing both the applicable law and particular facts - what number, percentage, or kinds of violations should be determinative, what standard of proof should be required, and who should make the decision.
Each of these questions, and many others like them, present issues analogous to the kinds of issues that have repeatedly arisen in the experience of other democracies. To the extent these questions involve issues of Ballot Access2, it is the purpose of this paper to provide comparative information and analysis of alternative approaches for the benefit of the members of the Central Election Commission and the Subject CEC's, their expert staffs, and the elected leaders who will be responsible for determining how the Russian Federation and its various Subject components choose to utilize others' prior experience in their work.
It has been the experience of the CEC, of various of the Subject CECs, and also of the courts and judges who have become involved with these issues, that controversies have most often arisen where the applicable election laws and regulations contain gaps, contradictions, or ambiguities. Making their jobs more difficult, and the consequences of their actions more significant, these controversies have not arisen in times of quiet or as abstract theoretical principles but instead have appeared at the very center of political conflict, where individual political careers and interests of vital importance to Russian society have been at stake. To make matters worse. Commissions and Courts are required to address these issues at the very times when their burden of work is greatest, when limits of staff and funding are felt most acutely, and when time is short and pressure more intense due to the statutory and regulatory legal framework. None of this should be considered surprising or seen as peculiar to Russia or even necessarily more typical to a «newer» rather than more «established» democracy3.
Both common sense and the cumulative experience of a range of international experts who have worked on Ballot Access procedures demonstrate that:
«...the best laws and procedures are carefully and deliberately designed to prevent crises rather than hastily contrived to resolve them». /4/. But any effort to assess where the crises may come requires a thorough examination of the statutory and regulatory environment from which they may stem.
This paper accordingly begins (p 3) with the statutory and legal framework in the Russian Federation. We then will briefly consider alternative approaches in other Russian Federation statutory drafts (p 4 - 5), some assessments of the Russian expert community (p 5 - 7), and alternative legislative drafting approaches of a number of the Subjects of the Federation (p 7). We will then move on to the statutory framework relevant to candidate signature collection (p 7 - 8), the 1995 and 1996 election campaigns (p 8), and a short review of several of the major controversies and court resolution of challenges (p 9). The focus then turns to Commission establishment, role, and instructions to subordinate organs (p 10 - 12) and some brief comparative discussion of approaches local Subjects have taken (p 13). Comparative information and analysis of American approaches to Ballot Access is then set out (p 13 - 25 and Tables 1 through 3) followed by concepts from Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the CIS and Canada (p 25 - 29). Our conclusions and tentative recommendations (p 29 - 33) endeavor to put comparative alternatives into a usable Russian framework, and observations in the Endnotes are designed both to clarify these comparative alternatives and to raise questions relevant to applicable Russian law. Important Features of Russian Federation Election Laws Related to Ballot Access:
I - Law on the Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights of the Citizens of the Russian Federation
Russian Federation legislation setting up the legal framework for citizens' democratic rights to determine their institutions of government and the individuals who will lead them commences with the Federal Law on the Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights of the Citizens of the Russian Federation. This law was approved by the State Duma on 26 October 1994, the Federation Council on 15 November 1994, and it was signed into law by the President of the Russian Federation in December 1994. With respect to principles and procedures relevant to Ballot Access4, the relevant sections of the law are set out in Appendix A.
II - Law on Election of Deputies of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation
The Federal Law on the Election of Deputies of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation is a logical next step in the implementation of the Basic Guarantees Law described above. This law was passed by the State Duma on 9 June 1995, approved by the Federation Council on 15 June 1995, and it was signed into law by the President of the Russian Federation on 21 June 1995. With respect to principles and procedures relevant to questions of Ballot Access, the relevant sections of the law are set out in Appendix B.
III - Federal Law on Election of President of the Russian Federation
Like the Federal Law on the Election of Deputies of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the Federal Law on the Election of the President of the Russian Federation is a logical step in the implementation of the Basic Guarantees Law described above. This law was adopted by the State Duma on 24 March 1995, approved by the Federation Council on 4 May 1995, and it was signed into law by the President of the Russian Federation on 17 May 1995.
The general principles, legal and administrative structure, hierarchy, and supervisory responsibilities of the Central Election Commission and subordinate Subject CECs, and roles contemplated for individual Russian citizens, electoral associations, political blocs, and authorized representatives established by this law essentially parallel those principles, structures, and roles established in the Basic Guarantees and Duma election laws. With respect to principles and procedures relevant to questions of Ballot Access, and in particular the governance of Presidential candidate nomination, the relevant sections of the law are set out in Appendix C.
1 In a Presidential system of government, the executive branch is headed by a single winner who is determined by the results of the presidential election. This system as distinguished from a Parliamentary system of government, where the leader of the executive branch or «government» is typically (though not always) chosen from the leading or majority parliamentary party or coalition. Presidential system rules differ most fundamentally on the issue of whether the leading first round candidate is elected if he obtains an absolute majority or a plurality above a certain percentage of votes or whether there is subsequent run - off balloting and the rules under which such balloting occurs. For the legislative branch of government, the primary distinctions are between plurality or first past - the - post selections, where the highest vote getter (sometimes with thresholds or run - off provisions) is entitled to a seat in a single member district as contrasted with various kinds of proportional representation or multiple member election district approaches. Electoral systems in different parts of the world employ these alternatives in many combinations. For illustrative comparative approaches, see. Comparing Democracies, Elections and Voting in Global Perspective - Lawrence LeDuc, Richard Niemi, and Pippa Norris (1996)
2 The International Foundation for Election Systems, IFES, is preparing a number of papers assessing options for Russian Federation election law reform from a comparative international law perspective on a wide range of issues beyond Ballot Access. See, e.g. Opportunities for Innovation in Electing Legislatures of the Russian Federation: A Comparative Review of Voting Systems - Robert Alan Dahl, October 1996. See also. The Election of the President of the Russian Federation: A Technical Analysis with Recommendations for Legal and Procedural Reform (forthcoming).
3 For example, in discussing the history of Australian elections, an Australian election law analysis, commenting on the Labour government actions after 1911 expanding the eligible pool of voters not too long after the Federation of the six former Australian colonies set out on the road of independence from Great Britain, identified the problem for election law officials in coping with a large number of responsibilities in a compressed period of time. The analysis goes on to state: «The problem of peaks and troughs remains. With 10 million electors, there are approximately 2.5 million roll transactions per annum. In the 'close - of - roll rush' which takes place once an election date is announced, there can be more than half a million transactions processed in a few days. For the 1990 election, in a ten - day period there were 160,000 new electors added to the roll, 170,000 moved to a different electoral division and 100,000 changes of address within the same division, 18,000 names deleted for death, as duplicates now identified or for some other grounds of objection, to a total of 595,000 transactions.» Source - The Bureaucratic Model: Australia - Colin A Hughes, cited in the Journal of Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1972. (The careful reader will note that these identified change numbers do not seem to add up to 595,000 but rather are 448,000, further illustrating the possibility for error in working with large numbers of transactions under pressure).
4 Ballot Access I - Issues and Options, United States Federal Election Commission, Introduction, p (iii).
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