The Accidental Deputy: A Spoiler Candidate Surprisingly Wins A Seat In Moscow's City Duma

[rpannier]

The September 8 elections to the Moscow City Duma produced many surprises. But perhaps the most unexpected result came in District No. 3, where an engineer who is virtually unknown and did not campaign defeated the candidate supported by the ruling United Russia party and took the seat.

Commenting on the result the day after the election, former State Duma deputy and opposition politician Dmitry Gudkov -- who was himself disqualified from running in the elections because Moscow election officials rejected his qualifying signatures -- noted of the District No. 3 victor that "no one has even seen him yet."

snip

The genuine oppositionist Solovyov, a close associate of Gudkov's, ended up having his signatures rejected by the Moscow Election Commission. His home was searched by police. Four days before the elections, he was sentenced to 20 days of house arrest for repeatedly participating in unsanctioned demonstrations.

snip

After large-scale protests, court cases, hunger strikes, and appeals to the Central Election Commission failed to reinstate any of the disqualified independent candidates, opposition leader and anti-corruption campaigner Aleksei Navalny announced the tactic of "smart voting," urging voters to come to the polls and vote for the candidate on the ballot who was most likely to defeat the United Russia-backed candidate, no matter what party he or she might represent. The idea was to demonstrate the ruling party's unpopularity and, ideally, to deprive it of its majority in the new city legislature.

link
https://www.rferl.org/a/moscow-duma-election-solovyov-united-russia-mystery-deputy-gudkov/30159304.html

[doc03]

1. Has he accidentally fallen from a hotel room yet?