United Russia, the country's ruling party, was assigned the first slot on ballots in 21 of 39 regions holding regional parliamentary elections in September, according to the Yabloko party and Ivan Bolshakov, head of its analytical center.
Bolshakov calculated the probability of such an outcome at 0.00000378%, or one chance in 26 million. He said a normal distribution would give each participating party five to eight first places.
"Thus, United Russia violates not only state laws (we still have not received a response from the Moscow City Election Commission to our complaint about the party's illegal campaigning), but also the laws of mathematics," Bolshakov said. He added that with equal chances for all participants, such a result looks like a "grandiose statistical deviation from the norm."
Yabloko is registered for elections in five regions: in the Sverdlovsk region the party received ballot number 2, in the Kaliningrad and Novgorod regions — number 3, in the Tomsk region — number 4, and in the Pskov region — number 9.