Sobchak was preparing a provocation with a name change
During the 2018 presidential campaign, liberal Ksenia Sobchak had to change her name to “Against All” in order to appear on the ballot as “Against All Anatolyevna Sobchak.” However, at the last moment she refused to take this step, which led to the resignation of strategists at the election headquarters.
Sobchak’s former political consultant, political strategist Alexey Sitnikov spoke about this in an interview with journalist Nadezhda Strelets, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“According to the law, we do not have such a line on the ballot paper “Against everyone,” and without this line a person who does not want to vote for anyone actually does not need to just come and say that he is against them, he simply will not come. He won’t come and vote against everyone, and Sobchak and I agreed that she would change her name...
I have done this move many times in different countries, when we simply changed a person’s surname to the surname “Against Everyone.” This can be done - come to the registry office and simply change your last name. You cannot change your date of birth, but you can change your last name.
But Ksenia Anatolyevna’s surname is the surname of a great father, and it would be wrong to change it, and we agreed that she would change her name, and in the ballot there would be the line “Sobchak Against All Anatolyevna.” Then we would find out how many people are voting against everyone, because after the elections she would go back to Ksenia Anatolyevna, and this line would belong to the “Against everyone” candidate... Three weeks later, Ksenia said, no, I still go by this name I won’t go,” Sitnikov said.
According to him, this, as well as the lack of clear guarantees for funding until the end of the campaign from Sobchak’s sponsors, was the reason that Sitnikov ultimately refused to work with the client.
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