Amendments to the Russian electoral legislation 2020-2025: pros and cons

The article analyzes the amendments to the electoral legislation introduced in the period from 2020 to 2025. The author classifies these innovations into three groups based on the criterion of their impact on the implementation of citizens’ electoral rights and compliance with the such requirements of the Constitution and international standards as: amendments that improve the implementation of electoral rights, conditionally «neutral» innovations and norms that create obstacles to the implementation of citizens’ rights to participate in elections and determination of their expression of will. It is noted that during the new update of the Constitution of Russia the legislator needs to introduce a chapter devoted to the electoral system in order to avoid constant and politicized corrections in the electoral legislation, to regulate in detail the system of electoral legal relations in order to increase citizens’ trust in the election results, to reduce absenteeism and at the same time avoid the delegitimization of state institutions formed through elections.