The party nominated 141 people, 135 of whom were able to submit documents to electoral commissions, and 127 were registered as candidates, a source familiar with the situation told Ekho.
In most cases candidates were removed because of administrative fines under articles covering the display of "extremist symbols" and the "discrediting of the army." Some of the grounds were curious: Oksana Boyarskaya, running in the Korkinsky single-mandate district, was removed on a claim by the Zelyonye (Greens) party over a male voice in a campaign video. The court found it impossible to establish who the voice belonged to, whether that person holds Russian citizenship, whether they have reached the age of majority, and whether they gave written consent to the use of the voice.
The registration of Larisa Dolzhikova in Smolensk was annulled over a quote from a book by the American philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky published on VKontakte — the court deemed this a copyright violation.
In some regions Yabloko will not be represented in the election at all. In the Chelyabinsk region a court removed all five of the party's candidates. In the Ulyanovsk region both of its State Duma candidates — Dmitry Gondarenko and Yevgeny Skripkin — withdrew from the election themselves because of pressure.
Despite the party's removal under the slogan "for peace," some candidates are continuing to fight. Polina Lermant hopes to win a State Duma seat in Moscow's Medvedkovsky single-mandate district. She is one of the few Yabloko candidates who still have a chance of taking part in the election.
Voting in the State Duma election begins tomorrow.