17 May 2012, 19:00
In Astrakhan, court examines video from polling stations to consider Oleg Shein's lawsuit
Today, the Kirov District Court of Astrakhan, which considers a lawsuit filed by Oleg Shein, ex-candidate for the position of the City Mayor, against the City Election Commission to invalidate the election of the Mayor, began to examine video records provided at the request of the Court by the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation from 160 precinct election commissions (PECs).
Earlier, the representative of the Court stated that the parcels with hard disks provided by the Company "Rostelecom" would be opened in the courtroom. However, just two hard disks with yellow labels on each of them were brought to the courtroom, the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports from the place.
Till lunch break, the Court had examined the video records from 7 PECs: No. 382, 384, 386, 387, 389,391, and 392. The video files, sent at the request of the Court, appeared to contain no video from the PEC No. 385, which was present at the hard disk, attached to the letter of complaint.
After reviewing the video from the first PEC, a representative of the City Election Commission responded to the question of the Judge that there was no need for watching complete volume of videos from each polling station.
In total, the complainant party intends to offer the Court to review about 160 video records from the polling stations of Astrakhan. During the day, the Court managed to examine video records from 14 polling stations, the RIA "Novosti" reports.
In the course of reviewing, the complainant emphasized at the trial that the videos from the web cameras recorded the following violations: tables were installed not in place of ballot boxes, counting of votes was carried out by bending corners of ballots, marks for the candidates were not shown and were not disclosed, the results in the final minutes were not disclosed, and no final meetings were held, the "Interfax" reports.
Author: Elena Grebenyuk Source: CK correspondent