A certificate of the registered candidate was received on behalf of Putin by the head of the legal department of his election team Sergey Kabyshev, TASS reported. The commission’s member Alexander Klyukin said that 232 signatures of the 314,837 submitted to the CEC had been found to be invalid. "No falsified signatures have been identified," he added.
Putin became the third registered presidential candidate. LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Pavel Grudinin nominated by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation were earlier registered as presidential candidates. They did not have to collect voter signatures in their support, as they were nominated by parliamentary parties.
Candidates from non-parliamentary parties had to submit at least 100,000 voter signatures and no more than 105,000 voter signatures to the Central Election Commission and independent candidates - at least 300,000 signatures.
Five more presidential contenders are awaiting the commission’s decision on the registration. They are Grigory Yavlinsky (the Yabloko party), Boris Titov (the Party of Growth), Sergey Baburin (the Russian National Union party), Ksenia Sobchak (the Civil Initiative party) and Maxim Suraikin (the Communists of Russia).
