MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st July, 2020) There have been 839 incidents of vote tampering during the week-long referendum on Russian constitutional changes, none of them grave, Russian Deputy Interior Minister Aleksandr Gorovoy said Wednesday.
"The figures are preliminary... As of 4:00 p.m. [13:00 GMT], we have received 126 reports of violations. This brings the total number of reported violations since the start of the voting [on June 25] to 839," he told reporters.
Gorovoy added that none of the reported violations were "serious enough to potentially affect the outcome of the vote."
The ruling United Russia party that has dispatched observers to polling sites, has, in turn, registered some 400 minor irregularities, the party's general council deputy chair, Evgeny Revenko, said.
Separately, Ilya Massukh, the head of Moscow's central for control and monitoring over the voting said that not a single journalist or observer has been removed from polling stations in the Russian capital.
According to Massukh, the center has been "even a little bored."
"Our mobile group has been called in four times during the entire voting period. This is good, and it shows that the voting is fair, transparent, and there are few signals [of violations]," he said.
In St. Petersburg, David Frenkel, a photojournalist from the MediaZona news outlet, complained that he was attacked by an observer and a police officer at a polling site on Tuesday. Frenkel has said he was asked to provide his details to officials and insisted he followed all the requirements. Nevertheless, a conflict erupted and the photojournalist reportedly had his arm broken.
The police have denied the accusations, saying that they had to expel him over obstructing the work of the polling site.
Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) chairwoman Ella Pamfilova asked the head of the St. Petersburg election commission to thoroughly probe the incident. She stressed that though it is up to police to investigate the situation, the CEC needs to conduct its own probe as well.
"I am interested in why he was not allowed [to observe the process], what is the reason for the conflict, why the members of the commission who were present there had a conflict with him," Pamfilova said at a CEC meeting.
Viktor Minenko, the head of the St. Petersburg election commission, replied via a video link that the conflict broke out after Frenkel refused to get registered in a due form to observe the process as a journalist.
"He refused, sought ground for a conflict. And, certainly, human factor of police officers, who, apparently, were already on edge, played its role. But no one pushed him out or pushed him ... He fell on his own, as the police say, but further investigation will show and give an assessment to actions of all participants of the conflict," Minenko said.
Pamfilova reiterated the need to look into the incident to avoid such situations in future and "adequately respond to provocations."
