MOSCOW, August 3 - RAPSI. The Korolyov City Court in Moscow Oblast has rejected former presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov's lawsuit to reverse the election results due to alleged local election commission violations.
Prokhorov sought to invalidate the electoral decisions of Territorial Election Commission No. 108, which he claims broke ballot packing and storage regulations while documenting the voting results.
The same court is handling two additional lawsuits filed by Prokhorov to reverse the election results of two other election commissions. Both lawsuits will be heard on August 7.
Prokhorov came in a distant third after President Vladimir Putin (first) and Gennady Zyuganov (second) in the Russian presidential elections held on March 4, 2012. Running as an independent, self-nominated candidate, Prokhorov entered the race with a fair deal of preexisting celebrity due to his status as a billionaire gold tycoon and owner of US basketball team, the Brooklyn Nets.
The March presidential elections came in the aftermath of the hotly contested December parliamentary elections. The parliamentary elections were heavily criticized due to widespread reports of electoral fraud. As a result, the March elections were subject to heavy domestic and international scrutiny. Election observers and journalists monitored polling stations and election commissions throughout the voting, counting, and tabulation processes. Unique to the March elections was the posting of web cameras in all polling stations throughout Russia. These cameras were set up as part of an initiative to increase transparency in the voting process after the fallout from the parliamentary elections.