Happy Newyear 2017...

Sep 18 : 2016:  Elections in Russia2016 - Parliamentary Elections.

In Russian elections Putin-backed United Russia party wins 54% of Parliamentary seats led by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Legislative elections were held in Russia on 18 September 2016, having been brought forward from 4 December. At stake were the 450 seats in the State Duma of the 7th convocation, the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia. Prior to the election United Russia had been the ruling party since winning the 2011 elections with 49.32% of the vote, and taking 238 seats (53%) of the seats in the State Duma. Prior to the election, observers expected that turnout would be low and called the election campaign the dullest in recent memory.
109,820,679 voters were registered in Russian Federation (including Crimea on 1 January 2016. Taking into account people registered outside the Russian Federation and the voters in Baikonur, the total number of eligible voters for 1 January 2016 is 111,724,534. The vote had a record low turnout of 47.88%,[6] with just 28% of Muscovites casting their votes before 6pm.
Although the elections had been planned for 4 December 2016, deputies discussed the issue of rescheduling to an earlier date since the spring of 2015, with the second and third Sundays of September or October 2016 as possible alternatives.
On 1 July 2015 the Constitutional Court of Russia accepted the possibility of conducting early elections to the Duma in 2016 under certain conditions. According to the Court, the constitution does not require the election date to be exactly five years after the previous elections and the election date can be shifted if the following conditions are met:
1.Shifting of the election date does not disrupt reasonable periodicity of elections.
2. Limiting of the real terms of the Duma deputies is insignificant (less than a few months).
3.Shifting of the election dates is announced in advance, so to give all the parties enough time to prepare for the elections.

On 19 June 2015 the State Duma approved the first reading of a bill to bring the election to the State Duma forward from 4 December 2016 to the third Sunday of September 2016. The corresponding bill was adopted by the State Duma on the second and third (and final) reading with 339 deputies in favour and 102 against, with no abstentions. On 17 June 2016 President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on the appointment of the State Duma elections on 18 September 2016.[9]From that day parties had the right to start the nomination process for deputies to hold congresses and transmit documents of candidates to the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation (CEC) for registration.

For the first time since the controversial and unilateral 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea (from Ukraine), Crimean voters could vote in a Russian general election. Ukraine strongly condemned the vote. Various countries (among them the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and France) did not recognize the legitimacy of the election in Crimea. According to Russia correspondent for Al Jazeera English Rory Challands, (on election day) "Despite many Crimeans voting in Russian elections for 1st time, there's little excitement. Main sentiments so far are apathy and cynicism." Scuffles between police and Ukrainian nationalists were reported near polling stations for Russian citizens in (the Ukrainian cities) Kiev and Odessa. In Syria, 4,751 Russian citizens (most of them taking part in the Russian military intervention in Syria) voted.

United Russia won a supermajority of seats, which will allow them to change the Constitution without the votes of other parties. Turnout was reported as low. Throughout the day there were reports of voting fraud including video purporting to show officials stuffing ballot boxes.
Additionally, results in many regions demonstrate that United Russia on many poll stations got anomalously close results, for example, 62.2% in more than hundred poll stations in Saratov Oblast. This suggests that the results in these regions likely have been rigged.The government said there was no evidence of any large scale cheating.
However, on 22 September the Central Electoral Committee canceled the results in seven constituencies, where the number of used ballots exceeded the number of registered voters, or where the authorities were videotaped stuffing the ballots.

Paving the way for Putin to run for a fourth term as president in 18 months.Vladimir Putin's political allies won a landslide victory in a parliamentary election in Russia, near final results showed on Monday, paving the way for Putin to run for a fourth term as president in 18 months if, as expected, he chooses to do so.

       Seat composition before election:                          Seat composition after election:
    JR - 64, CPRF - 92, UR - 238, LDPR - 56                : UR - 343, CPRF - 42, LDPR - 39, JR - 23,
                                                                                          Rodina - 1, CPl - 1, Independent - 1
The ruling United Russia party, founded by Putin almost 16 years ago after he first became president, was on track to win 343 seats or 76% of 450 available seats in Russia's Duma, the lower house of parliament, the Central Election Commission said, after 93% of ballots had been counted.That is up from 238 seats in the last parliamentary election, in 2011, and would allow United Russia to change the constitution, although Putin can run again under the existing one as he was prime minister between his second and third terms. United Russia Party wins Duma election.