On March 31, opposition supporters in St. Petersburg held a downtown rally to demand a free and fair vote in the municipal and gubernatorial elections scheduled for September. The last such polls, in 2014, were a prearranged farce. The authorities barred opposition candidates from the ballot and arranged mass fraud through early voting to prevent any surprises. Participants in the rally, which brought together diverse groups across the opposition spectrum, called for the abolition of the “municipal filter,” the requirement for gubernatorial nominees to collect signatures from local lawmakers in order to get on the ballot. The filter has been used to disqualify opposition candidates in regional elections across Russia.
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Vladimir Kara-Murza: Russians are still fighting for competitive election
Soviet physicist, dissident, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and newly elected deputy addresses the inaugural session of the Congress of People's Deputies in the presence of Chairman of the presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet Mikhail Gorbachev (2nd L) in Moscow on May 25, 1989.
