ELECTORAL LEGISLATION OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION IN THE ASSESSMENTS AND CONCLUSIONS OF THE VENICE COMMISSION
Background. In modern legal science, when studying various institutions of constitutional law, the authoritative opinions of the international expert community, represented by the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), of which the Russian Federation is a member among other sixty states, have been actively attracted. The author aims to examine the electoral legislation of Russia through the prism of the legal positions of the Venice Commission. This is one of the first works that comprehensively addresses this problem. Materials and methods. The implementation of the research tasks was achieved on the basis of the analysis of the conclusion of the Venice Commission on the Federal Law of May 18, 2005 “On the election of deputies of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation”. A new version of the said Federal Law is currently in force. Hence it seemed important to trace to what extent the comments of the Venice Commission were taken into account by the federal legislator. The author used the following research methods: comparative legal, logical, institutional, formal legal, comparative legal. Results. The article examines the comments of the Venice Commission on the Electoral Legislation of Russia and determines the extent to which its legal positions are taken into account in federal laws on the election of deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation and on the basic guarantees of citizens’ electoral rights. Conclusions. Modern Russian electoral legislation in the part concerning the election of deputies of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation has largely taken into account the relevant legal positions of the Venice Commission. At the same time, the legislator proceeded from the fact that, in general, the specified Russian legislation corresponded to international standards, and the comments of the Venice Commission were more advisory in nature.