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Legislative elections were held in the Russian Federation on December 19, 1999. At stake were the 450 seats in the State Duma (Gosudarstvennaya Duma), the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia (The legislature).
To secure a place on the ballot, parties had to have registered with the Ministry of Justice one year before the election (instead of six months in previous elections). As an alternative to gathering 200,000 signatures, they had the option of paying a deposit of just over two million roubles, returnable if the party won at least 3.0 percent of the list vote. In order to increase proportionality, the law provided that if parties reaching the five per cent threshold got in total 50 per cent or less of the vote, parties with at least 3.0 per cent of the vote would also win seats by declining numbers of votes up to the point at which the total share of vote exceeded 50 per cent. However, if after this procedure the parties winning seats still had less than 50 per cent of the vote, the election was to be deemed invalid. In the single-member district ballots, if votes cast against all exceeded the votes of each candidate, a repeat election had to be held within four months. As a result, repeat elections had to be held in eight districts. Finally, as an alternative to gathering signatures in support of their nomination, single-member district candidates were also given the option of paying a deposit of 83,490 roubles, returnable if s/he won at least 5.0 percent of the district vote.
As a result of the elections, CPRF won the plurality of votes, but the elections were seen as a huge success for the newly-formed pro-government party Yedinstvo. Due to an agreement between CPRF and Yedinstvo, the CPRF member Gennadiy Seleznyov was reelected as Speaker of the Duma. In 2002 he was expelled from CPRF, but managed to retain his post.
[edit] Results
[edit] Further reading
- Hesli, Vicki L. & William M. Reisinger (2003). The 1999-2000 Elections in Russia: Their Impact and Legacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521816769
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- reviewed by Luke March in: Slavic Review 63.4 (Winter 2004), 897-898.
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