The Public Law Nature of Electoral Documents

The main problem investigated by the authors of the article is to identify the public law nature of electoral documents, which constitutes the essential characteristic of their content. Since alternative electronic documents have recently appeared in Russia, there is a need to identify their correlation with each other and determine their place in the mechanism of the implementation of active suffrage by voters. The author uses the methods of comparative legal analysis, synthesis, formal-logical, structural-functional and others. The materials of the study are the works of scholars-specialists in the field of electoral law and procedure, normative legal acts, statistical data, electoral and judicial and investigative practice. The definition of “electoral document” in the broad and narrow sense of the word is given. The question of the form of ownership of the ballot paper: private or state (municipal) causes discussion. In the theory and practice of electoral law, the issue of the ratio of paper and electronic versions of electoral documents is quite acute. According to the authors, it is necessary to equalize their legal status and reflect this in the Russian legislation, make the necessary amendments to it and fix the norms of legal responsibility for the abuse of electoral documents.