Brest candidate seeks invalidation of election results

Valiantsina Maltsava, a resident of Brest who ran in the city’s constituency No. 3, has sent a complaint to the Brest Regional Election Commission. Earlier, she sent a similar statement to the City Election Commission, but the election officials refused to meet her demands.

The former candidate argues that the decision of the City Election Commission is illegal, as it is not based on facts that were observed during the elections. Ms. Maltsava says in her complaint that voting in the constituency was marred by gross violations of citizens’ rights and legislation. In particular, a ballot box with a broken seal was found at polling station No. 19 during the early voting campaign. According to the candidate, the box was opened to rig voting results by replacing the ballots in the ballot box.

Ms. Maltsava says that similar violations were reported at three more polling stations of Brest (Nos. 16, 17 and 18), where the City Election Commission refused to use additional seals. When counting the votes at these polling stations, observers were unable to see for whom voters cast their votes in the ballots counted by members of the election commission.

The complainant believes that such violations do now allow to find election results valid, while the City Election Commission ignored the obvious violations during voting.

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