vybory.nnov.ru — the official site of the electoral commission of the municipal formation City of Nizhny Novgorod[3]. The signature line of the home page gave the commission's address in the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin — "603082, Nizhny Novgorod, Kremlin, building 5", the telephone and fax (831) 439-03-45 and the email address vybory@admgor.nnov.ru[2][3]. The first snapshot of the domain in the web archive is dated 12 December 1998, the last one 2 November 2021[5]. In the inventory of Nizhny Novgorod sites compiled for the present study according to the rubricator of the nn.ru catalogue, the resource is recorded as "Electoral commission for the election of deputies to the city duma" with the explanation "Nizhny Novgorod electoral commission".

The early version: a single page and the developer's signature

The snapshot of October 2006 caught the site in an extremely modest state. The heading of the home page read "Elections in Nizhny Novgorod", below it stood the copyright notice and the line "Electoral commission of the city of Nizhny Novgorod", and the page was closed by the signature "Development and support by “INFORIS)”"[1]. The snapshot preserved no textual content apart from these lines: the rest, apparently, was carried by graphics or frames, which the web archive did not retain in its text layer[1]. The page was laid out in the KOI8-R encoding — a characteristic mark of the Russian web of those years[1].

How the site looked in the 2010s

By the beginning of the 2010s the resource had turned into a full-fledged departmental portal. The header was taken up by the line "Electoral commission of the municipal formation City of Nizhny Novgorod", then came a news feed, and beneath it a multi-level menu[2]. The top-level sections were: "News", "Election legislation", "System of electoral commissions", "Current elections", "Questions and answers" and "Election archive"[2].

Each election campaign unfolded into its own set of subsections, arranged to a single template: "Information on the current elections", "Calendar plan", "Electoral commission", "About the commission", "Adopted documents", "Documents for candidates", "Data on nomination and registration", "Incomes and property of candidates", "Information on the voting"[2]. The election archive held the branches "Elections of the Head of the City", "Elections of deputies of the city Duma", "Elections to the city Duma 2010" — the last of these additionally included "Sessions", "Competitions and auctions" and "Information on electoral funds"[2]. A separate branch was given to the "Supplementary elections of a deputy of the city Duma of the city of Nizhny Novgorod of the fifth convocation in single-mandate electoral district No. 28"[2]. The menu was closed by the item "Resource for the visually impaired"[2]. The signature at the bottom in the 2012 snapshot indicated the year "2010", and in the snapshot of January 2016 the period "2010-2015"[2][3].

What the news feed reported

The news feed was procedural. A 2012 snapshot preserved the entries the front page carried about the transfer of vacant deputy mandates: on 31 March 2011 the “vacant mandate of the deputy of the City Duma of Nizhny Novgorod Alexander Borisovich Kurdyumov, elected from the municipal list of the NRO PP ‘LDPR’” was transferred to S. I. Brovkin, and on 3 July 2012 Brovkin’s own mandate went to V. O. Atmakhov[2]. Alongside them were reports on the formation of the commission itself: on 2 April 2011 the acceptance of proposals for its membership opened and ran until 30 April, on 25 May 2011 the City Duma adopted decision No. 72 on forming the commission and appointed the members holding a deciding vote, and on 2 June 2011 the first, organisational session took place[2]. March 2011 passed under the by-elections in single-mandate district No. 28: on 14 March the commission determined their outcome, and on 16 March it established the overall results[2].

The January 2016 snapshot caught the site after the 2015 City Duma campaign. The feed carried the certification of the municipal list of the “Communist Party Communists of Russia” on 17 July 2015, a series of commission sessions in July, reports headed “The parties continue to nominate their candidates”, and the draw of 17 August 2015 “to determine the order in which the electoral associations are placed on the ballot paper”[3]. A separate line held the “Schedule of joint meetings with voters”[3].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet and the fate of the domain

In the Nizhny Novgorod Internet the site occupied the niche of a service resource rather than a public one: it entered the inventory from the rubricator of the nn.ru catalogue, but it does not appear in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru rating, and no votes for it at the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet) of 2004 are recorded in the surviving data[4]. Absence from these samples does not mean an absence of visitors: the counter and the vote did not cover the entire city web; on the completeness of the surviving data see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

Over more than two decades the site travelled from a one-page signboard in KOI8-R to a portal of electoral documents with a separate section for the visually impaired[1][3]. The last snapshot of vybory.nnov.ru in the web archive is dated 2 November 2021; by the time the inventory was compiled the domain does not respond[5].

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2006 (archived)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2012 (archived)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2016 (archived)
  4. web.archive.org — Voting results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day, 2004 (archived)
  5. web.archive.org — Snapshots of the vybory.nnov.ru domain in the web archive (archived)