All adult citizens of the Russian Federation have the constitutional opportunity to take part in elections and freely decide where within the country they will live and temporarily stay. To ensure that these rights do not conflict with each other, in the Russian Federation citizens can vote where they live on a permanent basis, that is, at their place of registration, and at their temporary location.
The legislative framework
Important! Please keep in mind that:
- Each case is unique and individual.
- A thorough study of the issue does not always guarantee a positive outcome. It depends on many factors.
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The ability of the country's residents to take part in its governance, including through the election of their representatives, is regulated by Article 32 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. The right to free and unimpeded movement around the country and choice of place for permanent and temporary residence is specified in Article 27 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
The procedure for registration and registration of voters, as well as the formation of their lists in election commissions, is prescribed in Art. 16 and Art. 17 06/12/2002 N 67-FZ. In accordance with these regulatory documents, citizens are included in these lists according to their place of residence.
As Art. 62 06/12/2002 N 67-FZ, those wishing to exercise their right to participate in elections at a location other than their residential address must obtain an absentee certificate at their polling station. This document is provided on the basis of an application submitted personally or by a legal representative upon presentation of a power of attorney.
The procedure for registering absentee ballots is not very convenient and quite labor-intensive, both for the voter himself and for election commission workers. Therefore, for the elections of the head of state and deputies to the State Duma, these documents were completely canceled relatively recently. It is still impossible to just suddenly decide to change a polling station on voting day to any convenient one, but the procedure for choosing one has now been significantly simplified.
A citizen only needs to submit an application. Moreover, this can be done not only in your election commission at your place of residence, but also in other election commissions, through the MFC or remotely through the State Services portal. Such rules are established by clause 4.1 of article 27 N 19-FZ of January 10, 2003 and clause 4.1 of art. 17 N 20-ФЗ dated February 22, 2014 for voting for the president and members of the State Duma, respectively. There are no plans to extend this practice to other types of elections in the future, but it is not excluded.
Terms of electronic voting 2020
To take part in the approval of amendments to the Constitution through electronic services, you will need to complete the following steps:
- Submit an application in advance to be included in the list of participants in remote electronic voting through the State Services portal (for this you need to register on the portal and confirm your account);
- Muscovites who want to log in through an account on mos.ru must register on it.
After approval of the application, the citizen is excluded from the main ballots at the place of residence and is added to a separate list. For such participants, voting will be preliminary, i.e. be carried out before July 1 (from June 25 to 20:00 on June 30, Moscow time).
If, after submitting an application, a citizen was unable or did not want to use remote voting, he still has the right to come to the polling station on July 1 in person. But he will be able to receive a ballot only after confirming that he did not vote via the Internet. For this purpose, a service will work that verifies the data and sends confirmation in the form of an SMS message.
Instructions on how to vote in elections outside your place of registration
To vote at their location, a citizen must first obtain an absentee certificate - the procedure for obtaining it will be described below. If this document is not needed for these voting categories, a person only needs to notify the state of his chosen polling station. You can submit a corresponding application within the period starting 45 days before the election date and ending on the eve of the election at 14:00 local time. The application or identification will then be needed on election day to receive a ballot.
Note! When registering an absentee document, a citizen is excluded for the duration of these elections from among the voters of his precinct at his place of residence. Accordingly, if for some reason he wants to vote there, he will no longer be able to do so. For those categories of elections where changing voting places is carried out only by application, returning to the original polling station is theoretically possible.
In this case, it is permissible to include a citizen back into the voter list only if it is reliably established that he did not vote at his place of residence. The final decision on admitting such a situation to elections is made by the commission of the given precinct, and a positive result for the voter is not guaranteed.
How to participate in elections outside of your place of residence in 2021
On election day, you must come to the polling station with your passport and absentee ballot. Theoretically, this document gives the right to vote at any polling station in the country, but due to possible restrictions, it is better to choose a polling station at your place of residence.
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If you want to vote in a place other than where you are registered, you should get yourself removed from one list of voters (prepared by government officials) and included in another list. A number of difficulties may await you along this path, which we will discuss below.
How is a polling station selected and who chooses it?
When voting at the place of residence, a citizen is assigned to a specific precinct based on his residential address. To participate in elections not at the place of registration, a citizen has the right to decide on a voting place that is convenient for him independently.
However, this precinct must be located within the district where the person currently has active voting rights. That is, for example, a citizen can vote in elections of deputies to local government bodies of the Krasnodar Territory only within this region. For example, he will not have the opportunity to do this while in the Kaliningrad region. For national elections, accordingly, the choice of voting location is not limited to the regions of the country.
Is it possible to vote at a polling station other than your own?
— A voter who will not be able to arrive on voting day at the voting premises of the polling station where he is included in the voter list has the right to receive 45-10 days before voting day (from August 3 to September 6, 2021) in the territorial election commission of the district, and 9 days or less (in the period from September 7 to 17, 2021) - in the precinct election commission of his polling station, receive an absentee certificate and take part in voting in the electoral district in which he has active voting rights and at the polling station where he will be on voting day. An absentee certificate gives the voter the right to vote in a single federal district at any polling station throughout Russia, and in a single-mandate electoral district only within the corresponding single-mandate electoral district.
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— An absentee certificate is issued by the territorial or precinct election commissions in the district where the voter is registered at his place of residence. You can receive an absentee certificate only by personally contacting the territorial or precinct commission, or one of your relatives or friends can do it for you by presenting your passport and a notarized power of attorney.
Where can I get an absentee ballot?
This document is issued by the territorial election commission, that is, the one to which the voter is attached at the address of his main place of residence. Before you get it, make sure that you even need it in your case, as they are canceled for some types of elections.
If in your case it is necessary to apply for an absentee ballot, follow the instructions below:
- At the election commission where you are registered as registered, submit an application in the prescribed form. This can be done within a month before the vote, but no later than the day before it begins.
- If the application is submitted for some other person, a power of attorney will also be required. It must be certified by a notary or the administration of the institution where the person for whom you are applying is located (for example, a hospital, if the person cannot complete everything on his own due to illness).
- The head of the commission or any other member of the commission who has the voting right indicates in the certificate personal information about the applicant and the area where it is issued.
- The applicant receives the finished document in his hands and signs for its issuance in a special register.
Important! An absentee ballot is issued to a citizen only once for each election. If this document is lost, it is impossible to restore it or obtain a new one. This measure is designed to protect the electoral system from fraud with duplicate IDs.
What additional documents will be needed?
In the application for an absentee ballot, the person requesting it must indicate the reason why he wants to vote at a location other than his permanent registered address. Accordingly, in order for this certificate to be issued, you need to provide some documents confirming the need to participate in elections at your place of residence. These may include, for example:
- student ID or certificate of invitation to the session;
- travel certificates;
- tourist packages;
- registration at the address of stay.
If the applicant cannot justify in any way why he wants to vote at a place other than his place of registration, then he has the right to refuse to issue this certificate.
The citizen must present the received absentee ballot at the polling station where he will vote. In the absence of this paper, he simply will not be included in the voter list, and he will not be able to take part in the elections.
How to vote using temporary registration
3 days before voting, you need to go to the nearest polling station and submit an application to be included in the additional list of voters. 3 days are needed for you to be included in the add-on. list at your location and excluded from the main list at your place of permanent registration.
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The bill is necessary. Only it will work out according to Chernomyrdin. the law will be adopted, but the mechanism for its implementation will not be spelled out and legal chaos will begin in relation to the homeless. there must be a program for the implementation of this law with implementers and sources of financing, deadlines
Voting procedure
In order to vote outside of his place of permanent residence, a citizen must come to his previously chosen polling station at any time during his working hours. You must have a passport with you (if it is replaced, a temporary identity document) and an absentee certificate. Both documents are presented to the IC officer.
The citizen is included in the list of voters with a note that he votes on the basis of an absentee certificate. This certificate is then confiscated from him and stored along with other documentation in the election commission. When participating in elections for which absentee ballots are not required, a citizen must instead have with him a printout of the previously submitted application. Of course, in this case, having a passport is also mandatory.
The voting procedure itself does not differ from the usual one. A citizen fills out a ballot according to established rules in special booths hidden from prying eyes. Having made his choice, he places the paper in the ballot box, from which the ballots will then be removed during the counting of votes.
Summing up
The answer to the question of whether it is possible to vote in the Russian Federation not only at the place of registration, but also at the temporary address, is positive. If we are talking about elections of the head of state or deputies to the State Duma, then for this it is enough to submit an application to any convenient election commission in person, or through the MFC or the State Services website, within the period established by law. For other elections, the procedure for issuing an absentee ballot is in effect. To receive it, a citizen must independently or through a legal representative contact his or her precinct election commission.
Makarova Natalya Nikolaevna
Lawyer at the Legal Defense Board. He specializes in administrative and civil cases, compensation for damages from insurance companies, consumer protection, as well as cases related to the illegal demolition of shells and garages.
How to vote in another city in Russia in the presidential elections on March 18, 2021
On May 24, 2021, at a meeting of the State Duma, a decision was made to abolish absentee ballots. But this applies only to the presidential elections - the first under the new rules will be held in March 2021 - and regional ones - in September 2021, elections were already held without absentee ballots. In the municipal elections of September 10, 2019, voting outside the place of registration was possible only with absentee ballots.
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If it was not possible to visit your polling station to receive an absentee ballot, then you had to follow the same procedure indicated above. The only exception is that they had to explain in more detail, verbally and in writing, the impossibility of attending elections in their city. The members of the commission, considering these grounds to be justified, entered the applicant’s name into the State Automated System “Elections”. At the polling station at the place of registration, the voter's name was automatically excluded from the list.
