Administrative offenses in the field of elections: comparative analysis of the «Protection index»

Introduction: The article considers a new approach to the problem of assessing administrative responsibility for violation of legal prescriptions protecting electoral relations. The main sanction for this type of acts in the Code on Administrative Offences of the Russian Federation is an administrative fine, specified in the minimum and maximum amount, applied to citizens, officials and legal entities. The proportionality of penalties has been assessed by calculating the index of protection. The established index is important not only in itself, but also as a means of comparing the degree of protection of society by punitive administrative sanctions against electoral offences with the punitive protection for any administrative offences in general. Materials and Methods: The normative basis of the study was formed by the articles of the CAO RF providing for liability in the form of an administrative fine for any administrative offences, as well as articles on election offences. The methodology of the work includes formal-legal, comparative-legal and mathematical methods. Based on the formal-legal approach the content of the studied articles of the CAO RF is determined. Comparative-legal method is used in comparing sanctions of different articles of administrative-tort legislation of the Russian Federation. The basis of methodological basis is a mathematical approach to sanctions in the form of administrative fines. It underlies the calculation of the "security index", which is a divided in two by the sum of the maximum and minimum amount of the fine provided for by the sanction of a particular article of the CAO RF. This methodology ensures originality and novelty of this study and provides new opportunities for comparative analysis of legal phenomena. The Results of the Study: based on the sanctions of the articles of the Administrative Code, the maximum and minimum protection indices for electoral offenses of citizens, officials and legal entities are calculated. It is established that for election offenses committed by citizens, the maximum security index (50 thousand rubles) is 67 times higher than the minimum index (750 rubles). In relation to officials, the difference between the minimum and maximum index is half as much - 32 times (1250 and 40 thousand rub.) For administrative fines for electoral offenses of legal entities, the minimum security index is 12,500 rubles, the maximum is 650 thousand rubles. Findings and Conclusions: A comparative analysis of the protection indices for administrative offenses in general and election offenses showed that: firstly, electoral offenses of legal entities, according to the legislator, have the lowest level of danger compared to the punitive liability of legal entities for any administrative offenses in general; secondly, the law provided electoral offenses of citizens with the highest protection index, compared with fines for any administrative offenses. This calls into question the proportionality of administrative fines for election offenses.