On 13th September 2015, voting will take place in the Russian Federation for elections at various levels, including elections for the heads of regions of the Federation, and elections for deputies of regional legislative bodies.

Open Russia’s project ‘Open Elections’ will monitor elections in the Kostroma and Novosibirsk regions. Around 1000 people will take part in the monitoring.

In the Kostroma region we will work in partnership with the headquarters of the regional branch of RPR-Parnas (The Republican Party of Russia – The People’s Freedom Party), in cooperation with the civil society monitoring movements ‘Golos’, SONAR and ‘Grazhdanin Nabludatel’ (Citizen Monitor).

In the Novosibirsk region, ‘Open Elections’ will carry out monitoring by itself.

The aim of the ‘Open Elections’ project is to mobilise and train volunteer observers. A host of activities have already taken place this summer to train and coordinate the work of observers. In the near future, the ‘Open Elections’ project will widen the scope of its work to further enhance the skills of its team of observers.

“The primary mission is not only the recording of electoral violations, but also the prevention of falsifications, such as ballot box stuffing and ‘merry-go-round’ voting (the practice of bussing voters from one polling station to another to repeat voting). ‘Open Elections’ will begin to work at full strength during the Federal parliamentary elections taking place in 2016,” announced Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr, the head of ‘Open Elections