MOSCOW, September 15. /TASS/. Twenty-three parties (88% of the total number) will take part in the upcoming vote on election day, head of the Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) Ella Pamfilova revealed.
"We’ve got 30 existing parties, and 26 of them have nominated their candidates, yet 23 parties were able to complete the registration process, Pamfilova noted.
In total, according to her data, these parties nominated around 74,000 candidates. "We see that competition is very high, whatever they say", the head of CEC stressed.
She pointed out that compared to the Duma election campaign in 2016, the number of political parties in Russia has significantly decreased. "At that time, we had 74 parties, but many were fictitious, it was a no-brainer to create a party, just a snap of the finger, and the party was ready," Pamfilova stressed. Since then, according to her assessment, "thanks to the process natural selection, those parties that were easily created, popped like balloons. Those that remained were the parties that worked for five years, they exist because they weren’t sleepwalking through elections, rather they exercised their political muscle in different campaigns."
Elections to the 8th Russian State Duma (lower house) are scheduled for September 19, 2021, known as Single Voting Day. The balloting process will span across three days — September 17, 18, and 19. In addition to the State Duma elections, voters will go to the polls to cast ballots for the heads of nine Russian regions (in another three regions, local legislatures will elect top executive officials) and in elections for 39 regional parliaments.