On April 24, the Oktyabrsky District Court of St. Petersburg watched a video from PEC No. 5, which had previously made famous an Internet video with a “panda woman” playing with a ballot box. The City Electoral Commission stated that unknown persons were connected to the surveillance camera at the site via Wi-Fi and thus a fake could have been created.
There is no evidence of any violations during the presidential elections, the commission believes.
A voter and one of the commission members filed lawsuits against the PEC – they demand that the election results in this precinct be declared illegal. Plaintiff Marina Shmeleva requested original video recordings from PEC No. 5 for all three days of the presidential election. As a Fontanka correspondent reports, on April 24, a representative of the City Electoral Commission, Oleg Zatsepa, showed in court two fragments of video footage from a surveillance camera in the voting room. The first one does not have a code to protect against fakes and has the date February 29, 2024. Zatsepa explained that the date was set incorrectly, but the process of preparation for voting is visible, which means that in the frame the morning of the first day of elections or the evening of the previous one. At some point in the video, the connection to the camera via Wi-Fi is announced. When asked by the plaintiff’s lawyer about what the “anti-fake” code should be, Zatsepa could not answer.
They decided to use special codes in voting premises for the presidential elections in 2024. They were generated for each precinct every day during the election process and hung on the walls to make it difficult to make video fakes and to confidently identify a specific PEC.
The second video, shown by the City Election Commission, first displays the date March 2, and after connecting via Wi-Fi it changes to March 17 (the last day of the elections). A code confirming the originality of the video is seen on the wall.
“There was a connection via a wireless channel by an unidentified person. This can be done through the phone, knowing the password or if there was none. This way you can download the content or replace it. The media video shows a similar room, it could have been made using the original video. But there is no such fragment left on the media,” explained Oleg Zatsepa.
Plaintiff Marina Shmeleva proposed to request data on the “anti-fake” codes of PEC No. 5, as well as a recording device in the memory of which the video recording from the site should be stored. Representatives of the PEC, TEC and City Election Commission objected. They stated that they copied everything that was on it from the camera’s memory card.
The plaintiff’s representative also demanded that a CD of a video recording of two women throwing sheets of paper into a ballot box be included in the case. The situation, angle, and location of the “anti-fake” code on it are similar to those recorded in the original video from PEC No. 5. Representatives of the PEC, TEC, City Election Commission and the prosecutor’s office spoke out against this, judge Natalya Kondratyeva supported their position, Videos from the Internet will not be included.
The first suspicions of the ballot box at PEC No. 5 aroused on the morning of March 16, on the second day of the presidential elections: two members of the commission drew attention to the stacks of ballots inside. This is not typical for a situation where voters put down the sheets one at a time, only for themselves. Photos of the stacks appeared on the Internet, but it seemed impossible to draw clear conclusions on this basis.
But on the evening of March 20, three days after the end of voting, a video appeared on telegram channels showing two women crawling on their knees and squatting around a ballot box, throwing stacks of sheets into it and trying to shake them. To do this, one of the women wrapped her arms around the urn and lay down on her back with it. Internet users compared what was happening to erotic content and were at a loss: why on your knees? The situation in the video resembles the voting room of PEC No. 5 in school No. 260 of the Admiralteysky district.
The main character, who was lying with a ballot box on the floor, looked similar in appearance to music teacher Irina Minyakova – this woman headed PEC No. 5. Her partner reminded her colleagues on the commission and other Internet users of social studies teacher Irina Borovlyova, who was the secretary at that election the same PEC. A video recorder was installed at polling station No. 5, but there was no live broadcast.
In court, representatives of the City Electoral Commission stated that, based on the results of checking the events in this area, they did not find evidence of any violations. The video appeared on the Internet from unknown sources; it is not possible to confirm the identities of the actors. Plaintiff Marina Shmeleva (one of the members of the PEC) offered to interrogate Minyakova and Borovlyova in court, but this initiative was denied to her.
Tags: Petersburg court studied video PEC famous panda woman April
