Procedural status of a member of the election commission

Abstract

The article is devoted to the issues of the procedural status of members of election commissions as collegiate bodies entrusted with the performance of publicly significant functions in the field of organizing elections. The presence of their own jurisdictional powers of election commissions brings to the fore the issues of the content of the procedural status of their members. The dualistic nature of the status of a member of an election commission consists in the exercise of one's own individual powers and the powers of a member of an election commission as a collegial body. Regardless of the level of the commission itself, one can speak of the universality of the procedural status of a member of the election commission, based on ensuring the tasks of exercising electoral rights and forming public authorities. In 2022, changes were made to the electoral legislation that change the system of electoral commissions with the simultaneous exclusion of members with the right to consultative vote in the commissions of the middle and lower levels. The author comes to the conclusion that the change in the structure of the commissions changes the functional component of the procedural status of a member of the territorial election commission. The introduction of innovations neutralizes the internal conflict of the status of a member of the commission, whose powers are returned to the mainstream understood in the broadest sense of observance and protection of electoral rights. The analyzed changes in the electoral legislation reflect the shift of the center of the constitutional and legal protection of electoral rights from the sphere of realization of the individual interests of the participants in the electoral process towards ensuring objective control when establishing the voting results.