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Maria Antonova / MT
Teachers voting early at a table in a Sochi administration building Monday.
On the bus, the passengers, including a Moscow Times reporter who boarded with the teachers, were given request forms for early voting. The reason given on a completed sample form passed around the bus was "work schedule."
"Clearly, this is a violation of the electoral process," said Yury Sokolov, an election observer with the Communist Party, as he watched the teachers enter a Sochi administration building to vote a short time later.
"It's absurd. They say they cannot vote on Sunday because they have to work, but they are taking time away from their jobs to do it on a workday," Sokolov said. "Clearly, this was organized by their employers."
Sochi, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics, will vote Sunday for a mayor in an election that has generated the most interest of any campaign in recent memory. After outspoken Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov joined the race earlier this year, he was quickly followed by a flurry of colorful characters, including a billionaire, a former Bolshoi Theater ballerina and the head of Russia's Freemasons. But the initial group of 25 contenders has now shrunk to just six, with many would-be candidates expelled over technicalities.
The race now amounts to a faceoff between Nemtsov and United Russia's candidate, acting Sochi Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov. Nemtsov and the Communists have complained that the authorities are using early voting to pressure people to vote or risk losing their jobs or getting bad grades in universities. A similar ploy was used to collect United Russia votes in the State Duma elections in 2007.
Of Sochi's 290,000 potential voters, a total of 5,914 cast ballots in the five days after the early voting started Wednesday, according to figures from the Communist Party. Nemtsov's campaign put the figure at about 7,000 as of Monday afternoon.
The administration building for Sochi's Khosta district was not equipped for the influx of early voters, including the 40 teachers, on Monday. The crowd was divided into groups of five or six people who were invited to sit around a table in a room with members of the district election committee, including its head, Aik Khrishtakyan. People filled out their ballots at the table instead of the usual curtained booths.
When asked why they were voting early, the teachers said they had other plans for Sunday and denied that they had been coerced into voting early. "I have to work on Sunday," said one middle-aged woman, who declined to give her name.
The building has only one curtained voting booth, so it is impossible to process all of the voters legally, said Sokolov, the Communist observer, standing with his camera outside the administration building.
He said he has seen several buses filled with teachers, doctors and other state-paid workers arrive to vote since Wednesday, always during work hours.
Yury Dzagania, the Communist candidate, said separately that 70 to 80 students were brought in from Adygeia University to vote early at another polling station.
At 4 p.m. Monday, no one was available at High School No. 16 to comment about the early vote. A guard explained that the principal was on vacation and the substitute principal was "still in the district administration building." A teacher in one of the classrooms said the substitute principal had announced in the morning that residents of Sochi's Khosta district "will be going to the administration building for early voting today."
"I didn't go because I live in a different district," the teacher said.
