Our position is an active boycott of the presidential elections. Boycott or vote for everyone at once? What does the opposition think about the elections?

The main political problem now is what to do with the presidential elections, which, of course, are not elections at all.

The fork is very simple: go and vote for one of the democratic candidates (in fact, against Putin) or participate in a boycott, a strike: whatever you call it, but in essence - do not go.

I understand that even among my supporters there are diametrically opposed opinions: but I want to present my arguments - why I believe that participation is better than non-participation.

First: Both world and especially Russian experience show that a boycott, alas, is almost unable to influence the outcome of elections and change anything in the country. Here, read studies of more than 170 campaigns around the world where the opposition tried to use such tactics.

The boycott was effective only in 5 cases. Exclusively where there was a turnout threshold combined with mass protest. At that time, campaigning for a boycott made sense, since if the turnout was low, the elections were declared invalid.

In Russia, under early Putin, there was a turnout threshold, but in the mid-2000s it was abolished.

We don’t even have an “against all” column. In fact, non-participation in the elections does not in any way threaten Putin’s fifth term - they simply will not notice. Well, the turnout will be not 70%, but 60%. In the mayoral elections in Moscow there was about 32%, so what?!

This is exactly how this strike was not noticed in the Sverdlovsk region during the last gubernatorial elections, to which Evgeniy Roizman was not allowed to participate. What, is the region now governed by someone else, and not the same Kuyvashev? Well, here at least you can understand the logic of the boycott: there were no other democratic candidates except Roizman.

The fewer people come to the polls, the higher the percentage for the government candidate. And legitimacy... Kiselev and Solovyov will explain everything about it on TV. There is an analysis of this argument from Golos coordinator Vitaly Averin.

In response, I usually hear a logical argument - why go if we can’t influence anything anyway? After all, we don’t believe that Putin will now voluntarily give up power? We don’t believe it, but elections are a political moment that cannot be ignored.

I perceive them as a springboard, as training and an opportunity to create infrastructure for further campaigns in which there is still a real chance of winning: elections for the mayor of Moscow, the Moscow City Duma, heads of regions and regional legislative assemblies.

After the municipal elections in Moscow, which, unfortunately, many also boycotted, we had 267 independent deputies, a majority in 17 districts, almost 50 thousand supporters who supported the campaign. When preparing for the mayoral elections, skipping the current move is to please the enemy.

And now about my specific decision - supporting the candidate from Yabloko. Grigory Yavlinsky was the only federal politician who supported me in the State Duma elections, as well as our municipal campaign in Moscow. Nobody else helped us. And we - together - united and achieved success in the capital.

Therefore, both humanly and politically, I consider it right to support him now, so that as many people as possible can hear the things that he says that are correct and necessary for the country. After all, “elections” are the same platform: you are heard not only by your supporters, but also by many other people, even those who receive information only from TV.

At the Yabloko congress I spoke about this in more detail. Watch this video, and if my arguments seem convincing to you, then come and support the nomination of Grigory Yavlinsky with your signature.

P.S.: In Moscow, during these elections, I will soon propose an option that, I hope, will become a compromise for everyone: both supporters of the boycott and supporters of the vote. It will give us the opportunity to use elections, whereas usually in elections we are used. Let's try to turn this board over - but please be patient until the holidays are over. Happy New Year!

In registration as a candidate for President of the Russian Federation. Navalny said that in this case the elections are not elections, and he will never recognize their results. Alexey calls on his supporters to actively boycott the elections; his headquarters throughout the country will turn into boycott headquarters. People will be discouraged from coming to the polling stations on March 18. There is an opinion that Putin is very happy with this situation.

“How many times have they already written, a call for a boycott and at the same time for observation leads to a negative result for the second point, which has already been proven in practice, in the same Sverdlovsk region. It is completely incomprehensible to the average and ordinary person when he is zombied and encouraged not to vote, but they are agitating to become an observer.In most cases, he will not do anything at all.

Navalny's headquarters were renamed boycott headquarters. His employees directly write that they will urge people not to go to the polls, and also DISSUVER anyone who intends to do so. Those. in essence, this is political propaganda to the target audience of people with oppositional liberal and democratic views, so that they do not vote for candidates, including those speaking from liberal positions.

In other words, a boycott campaign is a spoiler when there are perhaps not very popular candidates who are trying to promote democratic values ​​and gain their percentage, and there is a structure that does not need anything, but is trying to pull away votes. Moreover, these are votes not for Putin, whose boycott increases his percentage, but for opposition candidates with a liberal agenda, whose results the ideologists of the boycott want to underestimate in the first place. But even if different candidates do not claim great results, then at least 3% already provides one-time government funding to their parties, which can be of great importance for further campaigns.

At the same time, Navalny’s headquarters declares that they are ready to deploy up to 100 thousand observers throughout the country. Here, not only the figure itself looks ridiculous, but also the plan from whom these observers will go to the polling stations. Observation's biggest ally is precisely those candidates and parties against whom the boycott is primarily directed. And here it will be necessary to make a decision about which I myself do not yet have an unambiguous position.

To what extent is it advisable for candidates running in elections to cooperate with a structure that directly works against them? Is it necessary in a conditional region, where there are no candidate headquarters, but there is a boycott headquarters, to sign directions to polling stations and send them to the head of the boycott headquarters, who will recruit and train observers, including those with undecided views, and persuade young people to vote for the candidate who issued direction for him? It is reasonable to ask here how ethical it is for the boycott headquarters to try to get these directions if they are calling not only not to vote, but also, as has already been seen, NOT to SUBSCRIBE for candidates so that they take part in the elections.

It is possible that such cooperation is still appropriate in electoral sultanates for travel to places where, in any case, liberal candidates will receive almost nothing. But I would think very hard about regions with a high level of voting."

"Defeat the Russians"

All this really looks like links in one chain: the States seemed to be watching and waiting to see which of their lines would have a greater impact on the Russian electorate on the one hand and on Russian politicians on the other. The goal is completely transparent, all leading experts representing both Russia and the United States speak directly about it. Put pressure on the Russian Federation on the eve of the most important political event for the entire country - the presidential elections. But it looks like the directors of this long-running series “Beat the Russians” are headed for a crushing failure on both fronts.

Let's start with the Voter Strike. Navalny announced its preparation and implementation immediately after the Central Election Commission refused to register him as a presidential candidate - an outstanding criminal record prevented him. Literally immediately the idea of ​​a strike was supported by the West. The radio stations Voice of America and Radio Liberty, financed from the American budget, circulated calls for a strike, which suggested certain thoughts. “The boycott order comes straight from Washington,” said Andrei Klimov, chairman of the Federation Council commission for the protection of state sovereignty.

Navalny missed

The fact that the idea of ​​the strike was not born in Russia is also supported by the reaction of the opposition itself to Navalny’s initiative. There was no talk of any support here, because even the most ardent opponents of the current government understand: a call for a boycott is a road to nowhere, this is not how political struggle is waged, and such actions have nothing to do with the rights of voters. For example, Lev Schlossberg, a member of the federal political committee of the Yabloko party, stated in the Pskov Province newspaper: “this is Alexei Navalny’s fight for himself, for his personal political space, regardless of how this fight may end for the entire Russian society.”

Schlossberg rightly notes that “a voter strike is instilling in the people a sense of political inferiority, accustoming voters to the fact that they do not choose power.” “A politician should not accustom voters to political unemployment, even if he was unable to vote himself. You cannot corrupt the people through inaction,” says one of the leaders of Yabloko.

His party colleague, deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg Boris Vishnevsky, who cannot be accused of loyalty to the authorities, agrees. “One can understand the resentment of a person who was not allowed to participate in the elections. But it’s difficult to understand when resentment leads to a violation of elementary logic,” he told Echo of Moscow. “Those who stay home and don’t go to the polls never create problems for the authorities.”

And even former State Duma deputy Dmitry Gudkov, who more than once took part in opposition rallies together with Navalny, this time came out categorically against the idea of ​​his ex-comrade-in-arms: “the boycott demoralizes our active supporters... after the boycott, all these people will simply stop participating in politics. Ten percent of those who can participate will leave, thirty percent will simply become demoralized and generally sit on the couch and never go again.”

PR on other people's bruises

The voter strike is not about the people at all, it is exclusively about Navalny himself. In his video blog, Russian political scientist Maxim Shevchenko ironically argues: Maxim Shevchenko: “That is, the elections are illegitimate... because he, the great personal Alexei Navalny, who collected 16 thousand votes throughout Russia, was not allowed to vote.” Shevchenko blasts Navalny’s attempts to speak not on his own behalf, but on behalf of a certain mass of people allegedly standing behind him: “Who are we? Those 16 thousand people in 20 cities? You and your staff? Those YouTube viewers who watch you and whom you will add to the ranks of your supporters?

“This person is completely consciously aggravating things,” Ilya Remeslo, a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, explains to Vzglyad. “He’s simply exposing his supporters to the police, to being attacked, in order to gain further publicity.” By the way, Navalny’s deliberate desire to provoke conflicts with the police, his deliberate participation in unsanctioned rallies and refusal to participate in sanctioned ones have already caught the eye of not only Russian but also Western journalists. The American website Free West Media, analyzing all of Navalny’s latest actions, finally asks the question: “does this mean that Navalny’s main goal is clashes with the police, which are often inevitable in the case of uncoordinated public actions? And where there are collisions, there is always a threat to the safety of even casual passers-by. For any provocateur, injured civilians are a great success. Can the same be said about Navalny?” And more questions from ordinary Americans, pushing them to a conclusion that is disappointing for the Americans themselves: “Can we say that the timely detention of Navalny (even with violations and abuse of authority) helped the Russians avoid mass clashes between the police and demonstrators? Avoid dozens of arrests, numerous injuries and injuries, people hating each other? We ourselves could not avoid this.”

Member of the Public Chamber Ilya Remeslo gives answers to these questions. “In order to gather more people, he needs some bright, different picture so that he can somehow report on what he is spending his resources and money on. What could it be? This could include detentions, arrests, and all kinds of persecution of supporters. Without a destructive agenda, no one needs him and is uninteresting,” he told Vzglyad.

Ukrainian script

Boycotting elections is the same destructive agenda that arose as an alternative to the participation of a pro-American candidate (which, of course, Navalny would be) in the Russian elections. This is the logic of “So no one can get you”: no candidate – no elections. But this logic is not the only one... Because the United States plays its own game, and Navalny himself plays his own. The goals are the same, but the motives are different.

Navalny needs support – not so much human, but financial. The source of this financial support is not the pennies collected through online wallets, no. Support comes from there, from the West. And here’s the bad luck – at least one channel of this support, apparently, has already been blocked. Europe is turning away from Navalny - this follows from the position of the ECHR, which has never recognized the presence of any political motives in Navalny’s detentions at the rallies he organized. That leaves America, and there they act much more straightforwardly and categorically.

It is only in “House of Cards” and other TV series about politics that American leaders are distinguished by their resourceful mind and ingenuity. In real life, the same scenario is easily replicated in different countries. And this scenario is Maidan. And here it doesn’t matter at all whether Navalny would take part in the elections or not. Victory in the elections was not expected for him under any circumstances. He and his American backers see a different result – protests and pogroms. Like in Georgia, like in Ukraine. But protests need a reason. In one case, this reason would be a defeat in the elections - they say, they didn’t think so. In another scenario, which, apparently, is playing out now, is the non-participation of voters. They say that people did not participate in the elections, which means they are illegitimate.

Riots in your name

But even here everything did not go so smoothly. The boycott will definitely not be a real one - this was shown by the very few actions that took place on January 28 in support of the strike. Across the country they gathered some 5,000 people. In some places, 100 people came, and in some cities, just one at a time. Complete failure! But Navalny knows how to make more out of less. He will count as his supporters everyone who stays at home on March 18 and does not come to the polling station.

“With his campaign to boycott the elections, he will try to attribute among his achievements the non-appearance of those who would not have gone to them anyway,” explains Ivan Nesterenko on the “current comments” website. – In the vote on March 18, he would have received 1-2% of the vote, this is the electoral rating Navalny had in December. But due to the inability to verify the motivation of the “refuseniks,” Navalny will say that it was his campaign that led to the fact that 5 or 10% of voters, depending on the decrease in turnout, did not come to the elections. This is the main reason why Navalny changed the opinion he voiced in 2011. The boycott is beneficial to him in terms of reputation.” Roughly speaking, if riots start after the elections, they will start on your behalf - on behalf of those who are simply too lazy to vote, and it doesn’t matter at all for whom. The sanctions, the introduction of which was announced immediately after the collapse of the strike rallies, are, on the one hand, an informational background encouraging non-participation in voting, and on the other, an attempt to put pressure on the election organizers and weaken their vigilance. And, of course, an attempt to strike a blow at the Russian economy, which has emerged from recession and is gaining momentum. An attempt to deprive people of work and reduce their salaries. “This is a direct and obvious attempt to time some actions to coincide with the elections so as to influence them,” President Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told Kommersant.

Russia has never been afraid of choice

Will Navalny and the United States be able to do what they strive for? The prerequisites are minimal. Russia has never been known for its tendency to succumb to threats and pressure. Russia has never been afraid to choose, no matter how difficult this choice was and no matter how much they tried to persuade it to make another one. And Russians have always perceived participation in elections as their civic duty, as a manifestation of patriotism. After all, Russians are not used to being silent, and a boycott is not a choice, it is just silence. Self-deprivation of rights. Participation in voting will be a kind of antidote to the Maidan. And here it really doesn’t matter whether a person will vote for Putin or for another candidate - especially since the 2018 elections will be almost a record in terms of their number. A vote for any candidate in the presidential elections will be a vote against the Maidan. Against bloodshed. Against attempts to govern Russia from the outside.

Already this Sunday, according to the opposition, protests should take place across the country. We are talking about the initiatives of a well-known fair-haired politician. On December 25, 2017, the candidacy of Alexei Navalny, aspiring to the main position of manager in Russia, was rejected by the Central Election Commission. After this, the applicant’s lawyers filed complaints with various authorities, demanding that the FBK founder be allowed to participate in the vote collection stage. But in the end, he was never able to “break through.” Then in December, a video was published on the blogger’s channel in which Alexey Anatolyevich calls for a boycott of the 2018 presidential elections. He calls simple cooperation a “voter strike.” Fortunately for the oppositionist, this is not yet prohibited by law. But besides Navalny, other fellow citizens are also calling for a boycott of the upcoming elections. How do government officials react to “threats”? How realistic is a boycott? - Let's try to figure it out below.

THIS MATERIAL IS BASED ON MEDIA REPORTS AND IS A STRUCTURED SUBJECTIVE OPINION OF THE EDITORS, WHICH MAY BE INCONSISTENT WITH REAL FACTS.

Who is calling for a boycott or the truth about the 2018 elections according to Navalny

Political experts have repeatedly emphasized that Navalny’s position is snobbish. The oppositionist rejects other candidates. Without any evidence, he brands them “puppets of the Kremlin.” The situation is no different in the appeals aimed at the fragile minds of schoolchildren and students, who are the backbone of Alexei’s audience. According to the politician, turnout will be low in any case, and the results of the election campaign should be rejected. The newly elected president is illegitimate. Why? This is the slogan of the upcoming event: “Elections without Navalny are not elections”. However, it is obvious to the thinking layer of citizens that such statements are groundless. The previous and a number of earlier election campaigns went quite well without the participation of the FBK founder. Can they also be considered “not elections”? Unfortunately, this question is unlikely to ever receive an intelligible answer.

Instead, you can ask another one, also based on facts. The active activity of the oppositionist has entered the stage of “slow braking.” Analysts note that it was easy for Navalny to attract young Russians who were hungry for change and saw in his candidacy someone who could bring about these changes. But it’s a completely different matter when you have to campaign not for yourself, but “against everyone,” becoming a perverted copy of Ksenia Sobchak. “Navchak” has no choice but to hold the audience’s attention by all means. Probably, it was for this purpose that the “voter strike”, scheduled for January 28, 2018, was started.

According to Navalny’s supporters, the oppositionist has done a great job and has begun to pose a “threat to the regime.” In connection with this, allegedly, he was not allowed. They characterize the presence of citizens at polling stations as nothing other than legitimation* of the ruling regime.

Legitimation is the process of recognition by social actors of the significance of socio-political reality both as a whole and in its individual manifestations and components. Max Weber

Opponents of the upcoming boycott unanimously declare that by not going to the polls, citizens will only speed up the process of legitimation, proving the rightness of the “bought” statistical agencies. As an alternative, when fellow citizens are not satisfied with any candidate, but the count "Against everyone" presented in the form of the initials Sobchak, another unreasonable solution would be to damage the ballots.

How does Ksenia Sobchak react to this?

Presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak has repeatedly stated that she supports Navalny. However, despite this, the lady first put forward her candidacy, and then, as political experts report, she literally “drowned” the figure of Alexei Anatolyevich. Their views also differ on how to approach the boycott of the 2018 elections.

“I don’t support this idea, because it is even less effective than what we see in elections. Here mathematics stands against Alexei Anatolyevich’s initiative. Whatever one may say, 2+2 is still 4, even if we really want it to be 5.”, Ksenia Sobchak told reporters during a visit to Tomsk.

Explaining the above formula, the media personality said that by excluding itself from the voter list, the electorate will add votes to opponents. That is, according to Sobchak, it is imperative to go to the elections.

“All those who are driven to vote for Putin will still come and vote for Putin. And if you don’t come, you will simply increase his result. Unfortunately for Navalny, you cannot break the laws of mathematics.", added Ksenia Anatolyevna.

Who else is calling for a boycott of the 2018 elections?

Not everyone supports the position that a “voter strike” is the solution. But there are also cases when Russians simply do not see other options. For example, a certain group of residents of the city of Tatarsk in the Novosibirsk region, regardless of Navalny, announced their boycott of the elections. Long before the announcement of the decision, townspeople wrote appeals to Vladimir Putin and the acting governor of the Novosibirsk region Andrei Travnikov. In them, they asked the leaders to influence the mayor of the city of Tatarsk, Alexander Shvedov.

In the appeal, they pointed to a number of corruption schemes carried out by the administration. In addition, residents accuse the mayor of Tatarsk of “drawing statistics.”

“So, with the market value of a 3-room apartment in our city at a maximum of 1.5 million rubles, the administration purchased it for 2.2 million rubles, and apartments were purchased for 2.5 million rubles. There are 11 thousand people working in the economy, but, in fact, according to the pension fund - 4.7 thousand people, that is, unemployment is not 2.7%, but 45%. The mortality rate exceeds the birth rate, the population is declining, the average salary is 28 thousand rubles, but in fact it is 10-12 thousand,” brief quotes from the letter.

Unfortunately for residents, there was no immediate response. Their problems remained unresolved.

About the federal “voter strike” and the authorities’ reaction

Many regional governments have reviewed applications to hold rallies and given the green light. For example, the mayor's office of Smolensk agreed on a site in the park on Kommunisticheskaya Street. Here, supporters of the boycott will be able to gather on January 28 at 14:00 and protest. The information came from headquarters employee Andrei Korobtsov, who reported the results of the approval to the publishing house Keytown. The administration of the city of Chita also agreed with representatives of the local opposition headquarters on the site for the action. It will take place on Labor Square.

“I confirm my intention to hold a rally at the address: Truda Square, January 28 from 12.00 to 14.00 with a thousand participants”, - reported in a document signed by the coordinator of Navalny’s Chita headquarters, Mikhail Faizrakhmanov, posted on the event page on VKontakte.

Alexey Anatolyevich himself planned to hold a procession along Tverskaya Street and a rally on Okhotny Ryad. But the Moscow mayor's office proposed three other sites: Hyde Park for 1.5 thousand people; a procession from Pererva Street to building 157 on Lyublinskaya Street and a rally at the monument to the “Soldier of the Fatherland” (for 15 thousand people); and a procession from Marshal Biryuzov and Marshal Vasilevsky streets to the Shchukinskaya metro station and a rally on the roadway on Marshal Vasilevsky Street, opposite house 13 (for 15 thousand people). Three possible sites were reported by TASS with reference to the press service of the Department of Regional Security and Anti-Corruption.

However, Navalny refused all offers. According to the blogger, the place was offered in the Shchukino area, bypassing the other two named bridgeheads. Where do you plan to eventually gather the group? - It's not clear yet.

But the position of other prominent political figures in Russia is visible to the naked eye. Officials have a diametrically opposite opinion and believe that calls for a boycott of the 2018 elections are evidence of Western attempts to interfere in the presidential election campaign. It would take a long time to list those who think so, but let’s take Gennady Onishchenko and Viktor Vodolatsky as examples.

Gennady Onishchenko is the first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Education and Science. According to an influential Russian, the agitators of the “voter strike” initially want to undermine confidence in the president, who will be elected during a single voting day. He called the very idea of ​​a boycott senseless and called on Russian citizens not to succumb to provocations.

“These agents of influence play on the fact that for any political system it is important that the turnout in elections be high. The high turnout in the presidential elections in March 2018 will confirm that, having voted for one of the candidates, the majority of Russians eligible to vote will make their choice. The idea of ​​those who call not to go to the polls is very simple. This is being done in order to declare throughout the next political cycle that the elected president is allegedly not legitimate. Because if, relatively speaking, about 50% of the population came to the elections, then it turns out that less than half of all voters voted for the one who will be elected president, that is, the head of state was not elected by an objective majority. Those who advocate a boycott hope to realize precisely this scenario; they have no other plan.”, Gennady Onishchenko told FAN journalists.

The second example is the statements of the deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Viktor Vodolatsky.

“Those figures who call for a boycott of the elections can be classified as ill-wishers and even enemies of our country. The services of many of these people are paid for by the US State Department and are aimed at pursuing anti-Russian policies. In order for their efforts to be in vain, every Russian citizen with the right to vote, regardless of his political views, should visit polling stations on March 18, 2018.”“, the official said in an interview with the FBA publishing house Economy Today.

To sum up, we can say that the policy of boycotting elections is flawed in all respects. It’s worth remembering the proverb: “the dog barks, the wind blows, but the caravan moves on.” Elections will take place in any case. And if you don’t know whose initials to vote for, then do it differently. Check out the candidates' programs and vote for your favorite ideas, regardless of your personal preference for the candidate.

Participants in the Free Russia Forum in Vilnius and supporters of Alexei Navalny agreed on calls for a boycott of the ongoing presidential campaign.
The forum’s statement said that “the possible participation of Russian citizens committed to the principles and goals of a free Russia, regardless of their motives, in the regime’s special operation “Russian Presidential Elections 2018” is a fundamental mistake, further legitimizing the current aggressive repressive regime and complicating the fight for the creation of a free Russia."

The Navalnists, if their leader is not allowed to participate in the elections, intend to implement a “strategy of negative campaigning”, convincing citizens not to come to the polling stations, which should reduce turnout and contribute to the delegitimization of the entire process.

At best, these calls are stupidity based on basic ignorance of election rules.
In the worst case, this call is providing a great service to the Kremlin.

I respect many who gathered in Vilnius - but the ideology of “to spite my mother’s ears will freeze” has never brought results in Russian history.
Even now, the call for a boycott must be assessed in terms of consequences. And they are completely obvious.

The call for a boycott will not work on Putin's supporters. The hopes of Navalnists (for example, Maxim Mironov) that some of Putin’s supporters, having heard criticism of him, “may stop supporting him,” seem completely unfounded. Moreover, this criticism will come from those whom they, brought up by federal television channels, consider enemies, traitors, agents of the State Department and a fifth column...
A call for a boycott can only work on Putin's opponents.

Let us assume that some of them, having agreed with this call, will not come to the elections.
There will be two consequences.

First: turnout will decrease. Which, in fact, is what the “boycotters” are hoping for.
How strong? It’s unlikely to be more than 10% (and even then, this forecast is very optimistic for the “boycottists”).
And what? Will Putin be ashamed and refuse a fourth term? Will citizens consider the government illegitimate? Nothing like that: only political scientists will remember the turnout percentage two weeks after the elections.

32% of voters participated in the Moscow mayoral elections in 2013. Twice as low as in the previous mayoral elections, held back in 1999. But this did not make Sergei Sobyanin half as legitimate a mayor as Yuri Luzhkov. If anything influenced the recognition of his right to lead Moscow, it was not the low turnout, but the assumption that in fact he did not receive more than 50% of the votes in the first round, and a second round should have taken place.

In general, there is no need to first invent a myth that Putin needs a large turnout, and then heroically fight it.
The second consequence: the percentage of votes that Vladimir Putin will receive in the elections will increase.

According to the election law, it is determined by the ratio of the number of voters who voted for him to the number of voters who took ballots and put them in the ballot box. And since Putin’s supporters, as already said, will not respond to calls for a boycott, but only his opponents will, then if the numerator of this fraction remains the same, as a result of the boycott, the denominator will decrease.

Consequently, “Putin’s percentage” will increase.
The more successful the call for a boycott, the greater the percentage of votes Putin will receive.

This conclusion is accessible to anyone who has read the election law, and in the study of arithmetic did not stop at addition and subtraction, but went a little further, mastering multiplication and division. And it’s hard for me to imagine that Navalny and his circle are not like that. But they persist - why?

My hypothesis is simple. Navalny has shown many times that he considers only himself to be the opposition, and he considers elections only elections when he himself participates in them. If he does not participate, this is an event not worthy of attention. At the same time, he does not consider the exclusion of other candidates as grounds for a boycott: I can’t remember his calls of this kind, for example, when Grigory Yavlinsky was removed from the presidential elections in 2012. This is the first thing.

Secondly, it seems to me that Navalny is extremely unfavorable in a situation in which, in elections where he does not participate, other opposition candidates will receive a significant percentage of the votes. This will immediately destroy the image of the “opposition leader”, “Putin’s only opponent who is fighting for power”, carefully cultivated by his fans, and further according to proven guidelines. On the contrary, the less other oppositionists receive, the more convenient it will be for him to later declare that they have “failed” and it is “high time for them to retire.”

Therefore, Navalny (with rare exceptions) does not support anyone in any elections - even when it comes to democratic candidates, as was the case with the Yabloko-Gudkov list in the recent municipal elections in Moscow, or in the State Duma elections in 2016 , or in the elections to the Moscow City Duma in 2014 or in the elections to the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly in 2016.
The motives of Alexei Anatolyevich and his followers are clear.
But should Russian citizens who do not support the Putin regime support Navalny’s call, which leads to an increase in the percentage of votes for Putin?
And therefore extremely beneficial to the Kremlin?

Maybe there are more important goals that you should try to achieve?
For example, to come and support opposition candidates (and first of all, Grigory Yavlinsky, who - contrary to Putin's statements at the press conference - has a detailed election program for improving life in Russia)?

With your turnout at the elections, reduce the “Putin percentage” (and, according to the same laws of arithmetic, it will be lower, the more voters who vote for the opposition come to the polls)? Try to achieve a second round - which will be held if Putin does not get more than 50% of the votes in the first round?
Show that the ideas presented by opposition candidates have significant support from citizens in elections - and this cannot be ignored?
You can, of course, instead sit at home, not go to the polls and proudly call on the Internet or from the next forum “Russia will be free!”
But it definitely won’t be possible to make her free this way.