kvakhrusheva

Brief introduction:
We have local elections in St.Petersburg on 1 March 2009. There are 111 municipalities within the city and i'm standing as a candidate in one of those territories. In my municipalty people need to elect 10 deputies.
The procedure is following:
1. taking application and necessary documents to the election committee, after that i can open special bank account and gather signatures of people supporting me;
2. bring all signtures together with few reports to the committee by 23 January;
3. during 10 days they have to register me or refuse in registration;
4. in case of registration i can do campaigning till 28 Fbruary;
5. 1 March - election day.

3 January was an official day from which election campaign started. I came to the election committee of my municipalty. I was the only one who came to them that day so they were talkative and rather welcome. They enjoyed showing me endless list of docs needed for registration (application form, special form filled with all my property, including bank accounts, and income for 2007, copy of the passport, copy of diploma, special doc prooving my present occupation, copy of work book, doc proving my income in 2007 from companies i was working for, proof from my bank that i have a bank account there and how much i have on it). And they were so surprised and sceptical when I promised to come on 5th Jan with all docs (next working day, coz 4th was a day off).
On the 5 January i came to the committee again, with all documents. The secretary (quite old lady) was surprised and said that there is no head of committee today so she can't accept me. I smiled to her coz it was so stupid and she understood that. So she took my docs, checked it 5 times coz every time she was forgetting what did she checked already... but finally she said: "ok..." and looked at me. I looked back and asked for a proof from her that she has accepted my documents and i can start my election campaign. She looked as she first time heard about it and immediately started calling to the head of committee. He told her which papers she should give to me but one of them (the paper which i need to go to the bank with to open a special bank accout for the election campaign) she couldn't give me coz she didn't have a stamp (the head of committee took it at home and obviously he wasn't going to come). Finally i managed to get one paper out of two and warned that i'd call next day...
Before going out I asked something about the procedure of gathering signatures (now i have to get 59 signatures from people who live on my territory in my support) and that wasn's wise... for almost an hour we were reading a law together and trying to find necessary information which i knew before was't in it...

to be continued...