Paul Goble
Staunton, July 7 – Karelian activists are seeking to make dual-language ballots automatic in areas where ethnic minorities life rather than leaving question of whether to have such ballots printed up to local officials who often refuse to prepare such ballots even when requested to do so.
The Russian constitution specifies that non-Russians have the right to ballots and other election forms in their native languages; but that provision of the basic law increasing is ignored by officials. Now activists in Karelia are trying to change that (mariuver.eu/2026/07/07/aktivisty-trebujut-bjulletenei-na-nacionalnyh-jazykah/).
They are calling on Karels and Weps to continue to bombard election officials with demands that ballots be printed in their languages and to force the government to live up to its constitution not only there but elsewhere, demands that may seem a small point but are an indication of the kind of action that may have some chance of success.
After all, calling on Moscow to live according to its own laws and constitution was one of the strongest tactics of the Moscow Helsinki Group in the last decades of Soviet power not because that organization got its way but because it gained support for the idea of a law-based state, something the Karelian activists clearly hope can happen again.
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