MOSCOW, June 9 (RAPSI) – Russia’s Presidential Human Rights Council established an ad hoc working group to monitor the process of voting on the amendments to be introduced in the national Constitution, the body’s press service informs on Tuesday.

At this stage, among the group’s participants are listed the Council executive secretary, the head of the body’s Commission on Electoral Rights Alexander Tochenov, Council members Andrey Babushkin, Maria Bolshakova, Igor Borisov, Alexander Brod, Eva Merkacheva, and Leonid Polyakov.

Rights activists are to work by forming mobile monitoring teams across a number of Russia’s regions, to which members of regional Civic Chambers, Rights Commissioners, and representatives of independent NGOs involved as observers at the elections are to be invited to join, according to the Council.

The monitors are to visit polling stations to inspect if the procedures governing the voting are observed; in particular, attention will be paid to the observance of citizens’ right to take part in governing the state via the ballot; confidentiality of the voting process; presence of observers and journalists at polling stations, Tochenov notes.

Various pandemic-related restrictions across regions are to be paid special attention, the Council executive says.

Immediate objectives the working group is to achieve are self-organization, compiling of the lists of regions and personnel of monitoring teams, development of guidelines similar to those the Council adheres to as it monitors elections but with the specifics to be taken into account as concerns the nature of the event, e-voting procedures, and regional differences.