The Golos Movement presents the analysis of key changes in the legislation of the Russian presidential elections of 2018, comparing them with 2012. While some of the changes were aimed at democratization of elections, many amendments introduced brought new restrictions on the right to be elected, candidate registration, election monitoring, among others.

There was no real competition in the elections of the heads of regions held in Russia on September 10, 2017. This is the conclusion of the experts of the movement “Golos” in a new report assessing the level of competition in elections after analyzing the final financial reports of the candidates. Opposition political parties refused to substantially fund the election campaigns of their own candidates for heads of regions.

Executive officials still demonstrated an obviously discriminatory approach to the opposition parties during the formation of the District Election Commissions (DECs). The introduction of a requirement to consider the candidates’ professional and personal qualities did not contribute to greater political pluralism. The process of formation of the DECs took place in an atmosphere of greater transparency as compared to the previous local elections of 2014, but in general the new practices and the results of the formation of the DECs did not differ from previous election campaigns.

As in the previous local elections, one of the major obstacles to nominate representatives to the territorial election commissions (TECs) from political parties and public organizations is a rule endorsed by the Central Election Commission which only allows the nomination of candidates by the organizations’ local branches, provided they are registered at the regional, district and city levels.

The monitoring found that the period between the first and the second round of local self-government elections was marked by instances of harassment/intimidation on political grounds and misuse of administrative resources in Ozurgeti, which threaten equal and free pre-election environment.

Three draft laws on the parliamentary elections, registered in the Parliament in December 2014, have finally been added to the agenda of the Parliament for the first reading on Thursday, October 19, 2017. However, all three initiatives on the reform of Ukraine’s electoral legal framework failed to receive necessary support in the Parliament.

There were no official international observers at the September 10, 2017 elections, but election commissions and media reported about a group of foreigners who came to Russia with the informal status of “foreign experts.” Despite the fact that they had no official status of international/foreign observers, and, according to Russian law, could not be present in the voting premises, they were welcomed by the election commissions and allowed to spend time at the polling stations.

Electoral reform is currently not on the agenda of the Ukrainian Parliament. However, with the next parliamentary elections scheduled for 2019, the Parliament should start to discuss the already existing draft laws on parliamentary elections and the Elections Code right now. Even though reform of the electoral law and introduction of a proportional electoral system with open party lists are part of a 2014 agreement of the ruling coalition, Ukrainian politicians and lawmakers have been drawing attention away from the reforms.

ISFED published a policy brief on the challenges within the judiciary system of Georgia. According to it, the state must relinquish the leverage at its disposal, allow the judiciary to act as a real implementer of its own powers and let it implement its real function to protect democracy and the Constitution. To this end, the state must demonstrate political will and recognise the problems that unfortunately none of the “waves” of the reform managed to tackle.

EPDE publishes the second report, written by its Russian member, the “Golos” Movement, which analyzes in detail electoral problems, practices and challenges of the elections, held on "Single Voting Day", 10 September 2017. According to the report, the very topic of the elections is treated with silence in the media, and the election commissions that organize municipal elections are not overly zealous in informing voters about the election date.

The report provides an analysis of all stages of the elections to the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus of the sixth convocation held on 11 September 2016.  Despite the fact that the vote was accompanied by unfavorable trends in the social and economic spheres, the campaign took place against a more favorable internal political background as compared to earlier elections.

The parliamentary elections, held in Georgia on 8 October 2016, with repeat voting in a few precincts on 22 October and a second round of voting in a number of single-candidate constituencies on 30 October, were generally in line with international standards. However, the authorities need to investigate and address the serious shortcomings described in this report and by other observer missions. Incidents of violence and intimidation of voters in some electoral districts marred the overall impression of the elections.