Photo: Boris Nadezhdin’s Telegram channel
Liberal anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin has submitted two legal challenges to the Central Electoral Commission’s decision to reject his candidacy in March’s presidential elections to Russia’s Supreme Court, he announced on Telegram on Monday.
The former State Duma deputy said that he also planned to submit a third “main” lawsuit by Friday, but that his team still needed time to contact “thousands of citizens from all over Russia” to build their case.
As had been expected, the CEC refused to register Nadezhdin as an official candidate on the ballot last week after 9,147 of the 105,000 signatures of support his campaign submitted were found to have various deficiencies, a higher amount than permitted.
Nadezdin had requested the commission postpone its decision to disqualify him until Saturday, stressing that his campaign had been “conducted openly and honestly”. The CEC refused his request, however.
The Nadezhdin campaign says it collected over 200,000 signatures from across Russia, as people were seen lining up for hours in sub-zero temperatures across Russia, twice the number of signatures required for the nominee of a registered political party with no seats in the State Duma.
