As a rule, recall thresholds must be sufficiently high to ensure that is not up to a minority having lost the elections to remove a mayor from office. The Russian Constitutional Court has declared unconstitutional legislative provisions admitting recall of a local elected official by a smaller number of votes than those by which this person was elected. The Court considered “unacceptable that the recall can be implemented mainly by the votes of citizens who have remained in the relevant minority during the election, i. e. who voted for candidates who did not receive the necessary majority.” The Court stressed that “at least no fewer citizens must vote for the recall than the persons who elected the official, so that the vote on the recall does not diminish the value of the voters' will expressed during the elections, and the results of election are protected,” and concluded: “Otherwise, conditions are created not only for arbitrary, early termination of the powers of specific local government officials, not based on the actual will of the population, but also for narrowing the scope of representative democracy […].”