ACTIVITY DATES: May 2007 - September 2012

IMPLEMENTING PARTNERS: Golos Association

REGION(S): Adygeya Republic, Altaiskiy kray, Arkhangelskaya oblast, Astrakhanskaya oblast, Bashkortostan Republic, Chelyabinskaya oblast, Chuvashiya Republic, Irkutskaya oblast, Kabardino-Balkariya Republic, Kaliningradskaya oblast, Kaluzhskaya oblast, Karelia Republic, Kostromskaya oblast, Krasnodarskiy kray, Krasnoyarskiy kray, Kurskaya oblast, Mariy-El Republic, Moscow, Nizhegorodskaya oblast, Novgorodskaya oblast, Novosibirskaya oblast, Omskaya oblast, Orlovskaya oblast, Permskaya oblast, Primorskiy kray, Pskovskaya oblast, Rostovskaya oblast, Ryazanskaya oblast, Samarskaya oblast, St. Petersburg, Stavropolskiy kray, Sverdlovskaya oblast, Tatarstan Republic, Tomskaya oblast, Tverskaya oblast, Ulyanovskaya oblast, Vladimirskaya oblast, Volgogradskaya oblast, Voronezhskaya oblast, Yaroslavskaya oblast

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Through a vast network of election activists, Golos Association monitors Federal and regional elections and educates voters on recent changes in Russian electoral legislation and violations of electoral rights, encouraging voters to report these violations through its voter hotline.  Thus far, Golos has trained about 5,900 activists who coordinate through a Russia-wide election monitoring network. Activists monitored the electoral campaigns and election day operations during the 2007 and 2008 federal elections, using methodologies developed by Golos and accumulated within the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO) network, and continued their monitoring efforts in 2008/09 by observing and reporting on regional elections.  Information about the election campaigns is collected and publicized for international and Russian audiences.

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS:

Golos Association successfully conducted voter education activities in more than thirty regions prior to federal elections in December 2007.  In several cases, Golos forged partnerships with local election commissions to engage in joint activities aimed at increasing public understanding of election law.

Golos fielded nearly 2,000 election day observers in both the December 2007 Parliamentary vote and the March 2008 Presidential contest (4,000 total), providing the only substantial non-party observation effort in Russia. 

Golos continues to advocate for civil society organizations' right and ability to monitor elections.  They have also diligently reported on both the improvements and deficiencies in electoral processes, providing a critically needed objective assessment of Russia's electoral system.

While observing regional elections in 2008/09, Golos introduced a new internationally recognized methodology for election monitoring, which significantly increases the reach and statistical relevance of election observation. The new methodology was deemed successful and will be utilized in upcoming regional and Federal elections.

Golos received recognition for its monitoring of the high-profile mayoral elections in Sochi in April 2009 with requests for interviews and evaluations from several international media outlets.

In May 2011, GOLOS launched a new website with data on electoral statistics http://stat.golos.org. This resource contains the official results of more than 36 000 elections of all levels. Now Russian voters have a convenient tool for downloading the files with the election results (in the format of CSV), which can be used in Microsoft Excel.