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In an open letter to Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Prosecutor General Yury Chaika, dozens of German scientists and representatives of think tanks protest against the listing of EPDE as “undesirable organisation”.

The listing of EPDE as „undesirable foreign organisation“ in Russia limits, in the first instance, the rights of Russian citizen election observers and isolates them from international election observation.

EPDE has become the target of orchestrated smear and defamation campaigns by the Russian media in the run-up to the Russian presidential election.

The German-Russian Exchange (DRA) declares solidarity with EPDE and IESC, and their striving to promote independent non-governmental international election observation, which can contribute to the legitimacy of fair elections.

“Golos” experts analysed information from long-term observers in the regions as well as information from the media and the crowdsourcing service "Map of Violations."

Current legislative restrictions on the right to be elected president that relate to previous convictions and the need for the presidential nominee to have a valid residence permit, are excessive, unfair, and undemocratic.

In 2012-2017, 15 changes were introduced to the Federal law “On elections of the President of the Russian Federation,” changing 59 out of 87 articles.

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.”

Municipal elections will take place in Moscow on 10 September 2017. Current campaigning is mostly taking place under the radar. Regional media, including city television and district newspapers, continue to pay little attention to the upcoming elections.

On 26 March 2017 Russian police arrested hundreds of mostly young people for joining nationwide anti-corruption protests in Russia. Officially accredited Civic Monitoring Commission was deprived of the right to monitor the activities of the police. 

Lilia Shibanova, the founder of the Russian election observation network "Association GOLOS" and a board member of EPDE is currently being prevented from leaving the Russian Federation. 

Considering that, regardless of this year’s reduced coverage of polling stations by independent observers, there were still reports of individual acts of ballot box stuffing, “carousel voting,” voting under pressure, and other irregularities.

On Friday, August 26^th - three weeks ahead of the elections to the State Duma - the Russian government-controlled TV channel NTV broadcasted a documentary "The Secret of Golos". 

Lilia Shibanova, EPDE board member and founder of the Russian election observation network GOLOS was arrested by Belarusian boarder control at the Lithuanian-Belarusian border in the evening of May 12, 2016.

Ahead of Russian Duma Election 2016 the organisations Golos, IESC, EPDE and Silc are together launching a new initiative -presenting the results of their long-term election monitoring in Russia on the international level. 

Authoritarian regimes "copy and paste" laws to restrict the watchdog function of independent election observers.