Russian Central Election Commission Eliminates Boris Nadezhdin From Presidential Race

The Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) says that it deemed 9,147 signatures in support of Boris Nadezhdin's presidential bid invalid, which implies that his team managed to appeal just 62 signatures. This puts him above the maximum 5% threshold for registration as a presidential candidate.

• For the record, the CEC also rejected the candidacy of Sergey Malinkovich who wanted to run as candidate of the Communists of Russia (a separate and rival organisation to the post-Soviet Communist Party of the Russian Federation).
• This leaves the Russian presidential election as an ostensibly four-way race and effectively a one-way race. Vladimir Putin remains a clear front-runner, competing on an uneven playing field against systemic "challengers".
• The elimination of Nadezhdin, the only remaining candidate pledging to end the war against Ukraine, will reduce the legitimacy of the election (and, by extension, the turnout) by leaving no convincing alternatives to Putin on the ballot paper.
• The Kremlin is expected to take a variety of measures to compensate for the possible losses in turnout, including multi-day voting and the expansion of online voting, amid the need to generate a strong mandate for its current policies.