The law was adopted by the State Duma (parliament's lower house) on June 11, and approved by the Federation Council (upper house) on June 23, 2004.
The Federal constitutional law regulates in detail all the phases of preparing and conducting the referendum from initiation to official publication of the results.
The procedure of implementing the initiative to hold a referendum the Russian citizens are entitled to provides for establishing an initiative group, made up of regional subgroups, formed in more than a half of the Federation's constituents. The referendum initiative is to be backed by no less than two million signatures of the referendum participants.
To carry out the referendum campaign, the Russian citizens and political parties may establish initiative groups.
To enhance public control over the referendum vote and summing-up of the results, political parties, other all-Russian non-governmental organizations as well as interregional, regional and local public organizations may assign observers. Public control will also be ensured through placing the data from the vote protocols to the Internet right after they are fed into the Vybory (Elections) State automatic system.
For the first time provisions are made for repeated vote at the Russian Federation referendum provided that the failures in the vote conduct and counting interfere with valid definition of the Russian citizens' will.
