The updated code was presented on August 31 at a meeting of the Civic Chamber's coordination council for public oversight of voting. Unlike the 2021 version, which contained just seven points, the new document includes several sections listing duties and penalties for violations, Kommersant reported.
Under the new rules, observers may assess the conduct of elections only after the official establishment of voting results. They are also prohibited from spreading "unverified or deliberately false information," "inciting discord," "slandering election participants," and interfering with the work of commissions and the counting of votes. An observer must not leave a polling station without a valid reason. The right to review protocols and express a dissenting opinion is retained.
For a gross violation of the code, the Civic Chamber will be able to recall an observer early. The document applies only to observers of the Civic Chamber itself and does not extend to party representatives. The Civic Chamber was allowed to observe elections in 2017, Astra noted.
In August, the Civic Chamber and the association "Independent Public Monitoring" prepared a manual for observers recommending they support "lawful decisions" of election commissions and phrase objections as questions rather than accusations. The authors suggested that some technical glitches should not be considered violations. The manual was criticized even by systemic parties.
An electoral expert speaking on condition of anonymity told Ekho that the Civic Chamber's activities "have nothing to do with either international observation principles or the principles of national organizations professionally engaged in election observation." According to him, the chamber's task is "to provide favorable information cover for falsifiers," and he called the document "shameful, false, and unworthy of an observer."