A number of voters found that they were not included in the basic electoral rolls for the October 20 election. Trying to find out the reasons, they discovered that their personal data was used, without their knowledge, for preregistration in the Russian Federation.

The Central Election Commission excluded from the basic lists the voters who declared that they will vote outside the country. CEC chairwoman Angelica Caraman told a press briefing that there are two more days during which voters, observers, representatives of candidates and representatives of referendum campaigners can check the data and report errors in the register of voters. Starting with October 13, the final lists will be generated and printed in A3 format for use on election day.

During the period of verification of the electoral rolls at polling stations in the country, some of the voters found that they are not on the basic lists because they were, without their knowledge, preregistered to vote abroad, more precisely in the Russian Federation. Angelica Caraman said that there were particular suspicions even during the preregistration period. They appeared when the number of preregistrations for Russia began to increase significantly. It was then found that dozens of requests came from a single email address. “There was a large number of registrations for the Russian Federation at a time when the figures regarding the turnout at the last three elections at Russian polling stations showed a decreasing trend,” said the CEC chairwoman.

The CEC accepted only seven applications from a single email address, according to the normative framework, but requests continued to come from similar addresses in which only one symbol was modified. The electoral authority will analyze all the notifications received from citizens and will announce the next steps.