The trajectory of Russia's democratic development has long been of concern to Congress and successive Administrations as they have considered the course of U.S.-Russia cooperation on matters of mutual strategic interest and as they have monitored problematic human rights cases. A major question of U.S.-Russia relations is whether Russia can be an enduring and reliable partner in international relations if it fails to uphold human rights and the rule of law. Most analysts agree that Russia's democratic progress was uneven at best during the 1990s, and that the three cycles of legislative and presidential elections held under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin (in 1999-2000, 2003-2004, and 2007-2008) demonstrated serious weaknesses in Russian democratization. After the pro-Putin United Russia Party gained enough seats and allies to dominate the State Duma (the 450-member lower legislative house of the Federal Assembly; the upper house is not directly elected) after the 2003 election, the Kremlin moved to make it more difficult for smaller parties to win seats in the future, including by raising the hurdle of minimum votes needed to win seats from 5% to 7%. Also the election of 50% of Duma deputies in single-member district races, where independent candidates and those from small opposition parties usually won some seats, was abolished, with all Duma members to be elected via party lists. Changes in campaign and media laws also made it more difficult for small parties and opposition groups to gain publicity in the run-up to the December 2007 Duma election. Putin assumed leadership of the ruling United Russia Party and when it gained a two-thirds majority in the Duma election that year, United Russia no longer needed to seek accommodation with the three other parties that won seats in order to pass favored laws, including those amending the constitution. Electoral changes since 2007 included a provision that parties gaining between 5% and 6.99% of the vote would be granted one or two seats, and an increase in the Duma's term from four to five years. At a meeting of United Russia on May 6, 2011, Prime Minister Putin called for the creation of a "broad popular front [of ] like-minded political forces," to participate in the 2011 Duma election, including United Russia and other political parties, business associations, trade unions, and youth, women's and veterans' organizations. Putin also proposed that non-party candidates nominated by these various organizations would be included on United Russia's party list. Critics objected that the idea of the "popular front" was reminiscent of the one in place in the former German Democratic Republic when Putin served there in the Soviet-era KGB. On September 24, 2011, at the annual convention of the United Russia Party, Prime Minister Putin announced that he would run in the March 2012 presidential election. President Medvedev in turn announced that he would not run for re-election, and endorsed Putin's candidacy. Putin stated that he intended to nominate Medvedev as his prime minister, if elected. Until these announcements, the United Russia Party had left the leading slot open on its proposed party list of candidates for the planned December 2011 State Duma election. Putin suggested that Medvedev head the party list, and hence be in charge of assuring that the party win a majority of seats in the December election. In mid-October 2011, Medvedev unveiled his idea of "big government," involving the establishment of a group of his supporters to back the United Russia Party in the Duma election. He stated that during his presidency, he had "tried to develop our party and political system. This was not entirely successful and there were some failures, but nevertheless this is what I tried to do." He also argued that his government had worked to combat corruption and encourage the development of civil society and economic modernization, and should be endorsed by the electorate to continue such work. Some observers suggested that by forming such a political support group, Medvedev aimed to attract more liberal voters who might not normally support the United Russia Party but had favorable views toward Medvedev. A "popular front" program was released on October 24, 2011. Although there were some plans for the program to be the main document used in the elections, the United Russia Party decided after the September 2011 convention to use a compilation of Putin's and Medvedev's speeches, with the program serving a supporting function. The program calls for setting up a retirement system that pays larger pensions to those who voluntarily delay their retirements, lowering taxes on businesses and increasing alcohol and tobacco taxes, raising the drinking and smoking ages, and drawing up an ostensibly more humane criminal code. Despite these proposals, the program appears to emphasize the "stability" of the existing political and economic system over "modernization" initiatives as urged by Medvedev. The election environment in the months leading up to the December 2011 Duma vote seemed to indicate increased public discontent with the current political system dominated by Putin. According to a July 2011 opinion survey by the Russian Levada Center polling organization, 53% of respondents believed that the upcoming Duma election would be "an imitation of an election and seats in the State Duma will be distributed as the authorities wish," and 59% of respondents agreed with a statement that the election was "a struggle of bureaucratic clans for access to the state budget," rather than a free and fair election. In December 2011, Russian analyst Andrey Kolesnikov argued that Medvedev was the symbol of modernization, and that when Putin announced in September 2011 that he would re-assume the presidency, the public became more aware of and discontented with the basic authoritarianism of the political system. The discontent was evidenced by two incidents involving Prime Minister Putin, one when he was booed when he appeared at a boxing match on November 20, 2011, and another when some Communist Party and Just Russia Party deputies refused to stand up on November 23, 2011, when he entered the State Duma to address the body. By the end of October 2011, all seven legal political parties had been approved by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) to run in the December 4, 2011, Duma election. Four of these—the ruling United Russia Party, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), and Just Russia—already held seats in the State Duma, so they enjoyed an easy process of registering for the election. The other three—Patriots of Russia, Yabloko, and Right Cause—had to each obtain 150,000 signatures in order to run. Of these parties, Just Russia is a social-democratic party, the LDPR and Patriots are nationalist parties, and Right Cause and Yabloko are centrist-liberal parties. To make the United Russia Party more appealing, the list of candidates fielded by the party included nearly 200 non-party members who were added to the ticket during "primaries" held with the "popular front." Some oppositionists belonging to parties that had been refused registration called for a boycott of the election or the spoiling of ballots, while others urged the public to vote for any party but United Russia. A short campaign season officially lasted from November 5 to December 2. Russia permitted the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the OSCE's Parliamentary Assembly, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to deploy 325 monitors, about two-thirds less than those permitted in 2003. These monitors were able to visit 1,300 polling stations, as opposed to 2,500 in 2003, arguably an attempt by Russian authorities to limit their observations, according to some critics. Additional election monitors from the members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) were also invited to participate. As in the previous 2007 campaigning for the Duma, United Russia backers emphasized anti-Americanism and warned against the return of supposed Yeltsin-era populists and demogogues. For instance, in late November 2011, President Medvedev warned that if talks with NATO on cooperative missile defense failed, Russia would deploy tactical nuclear missiles to Russia's Kaliningrad enclave and would break off implementation of START II. The Communist Party and the LDPR also endorsed Medvedev's statement. Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov denounced the statement as a campaign effort to create a "war scare" to rally the public around the United Russia Party, an accusation President Medvedev strongly rejected. During campaign debates on television and in the media, parties running against United Russia referred to it frequently as the "party of crooks and thieves," an expression reportedly invented months previously by anti-corruption fighter and nationalist Alexey Navalny. The phrase reportedly incensed the Kremlin and may well have contributed to an accelerating loss of popular support for the United Russia Party. In one much-discussed debate, LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovskiy used the expression, whereupon the United Russia representative retorted that "it is better to be in a party of crooks and thieves than in a party of murderers, rapists and robbers." The private Russian election observation group Golos issued two pre-election assessments that alleged that officials at all levels, including the President and the members of the electoral commissions, were openly campaigning or otherwise supporting the United Russia ticket in violation of electoral laws. These officials had been ordered to maximize the party's vote, Golos alleged, and had pressured public institutions (including colleges and hospitals) and even local businesses to get their employees to vote for United Russia. Golos criticized campaigning by the "popular front" that was not included in the spending limits of the United Russia Party and alleged that Russian security officials increasingly were harassing the NGO during the run-up to the election. During the week before the election, the United Russia Party held a congress where it formally endorsed Putin as its candidate for president.