MOSCOW, December 23 - RAPSI. President Dmitry Medvedev has submitted a bill to the State Duma to reduce the number of signatures required for a candidate to register for presidential elections and to relieve political parties from signatures collection to take part in parliamentary elections, the Kremlin press service reported on Friday.

Specifically, the amendments imply that a political party should collect only100,000 signatures to nominate a candidate for presidency (currently, not less than two million). A self-nominated candidate will require 300,000 signatures in support, but not two million as now.

However, a party candidate will not be allowed to receive more than 2,500 signatures in a constituent entity and a self-nominated candidate not more than 7,500 (at present - not more than 50,000 for both cases). The number of signatures from voters living abroad shall also not exceed 2,500 for a party and 7,500 for a self-nominated candidate (50,000 for both cases now).

In any elections other than presidential elections the parties will be relieved from signatures collection at all.