CEC formed an election commission for online voting

The Central Election Commission (CEC) on Wednesday formed a territorial election commission for electronic voting, which this year will be headed by Oleg Artamonov, an IT expert and leader of the Direct Democracy Party. The commission included 16 people delegated by parties and public chambers of the regions. CEC Chairman Ella Pamfilova advised the regions to actively inform voters about the possibility of voting remotely, as to date only 446,000 applications have been submitted in 24 constituent entities of the Russian Federation, with half of them in the Moscow region. But so far there has been only one complaint about being forced to register to participate in online voting, Ms. Pamfilova stated.

The Central Election Commission at a meeting on August 9 approved the composition of the Territorial Election Commission for Remote Electronic Voting (TEC DEG). This commission is organizing online elections on the federal platform, through which 24 regions will vote. Also, the DEG will again be used in Moscow this year in the mayoral elections, but the capital has its own platform and its own online voting procedure.

This time, the TEC DEG was headed by an IT expert, leader of the Direct Democracy Party Oleg Artamonov, who in 2021 and 2022 was the deputy chairman of this commission. Former chairman of the TEC DEG Ilya Massukh this year will focus on working with the Moscow system of online voting. The first organizational meeting of TEC DEG will take place on August 24. According to the deputy chairman of the CEC, Nikolai Bulaev, it will elect the deputy chairman of the commission and its secretary.

The TEC DEG included 16 people who were delegated in equal proportions by parties and regional public chambers. Thus, all five Duma parties, as well as the Civic Platform, the Democratic Party and the Green Alternative, proposed their candidates for the TEC DEG-2023. Representatives of the chambers of the Arkhangelsk, Vladimir, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Pskov regions and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO) were included in the TEC DEG from the public. Oleg Artamonov was delegated by the Federal Public Chamber. As Mr. Bulaev clarified, the composition of the TEC DEG is formed in such a way that it includes representatives of those entities where, with the help of the DEG, elections to regional authorities will be held this year. And even the parties sent their representatives in such a way as to take into account this regional representation, added the deputy chairman of the CEC.

During the consideration of the issue of approving the membership of the TEC DEG, CEC member Nikolai Levichev asked what other principle was used to select candidates. “When I see a year of birth in the 90s, I can make an assumption that people probably understand all the terminology that they will have to operate with,” Mr. Levichev noted. “When I see a year of birth in the 60s–70s, I want to know: and a person on “you” and “by the hand” with those things that he will have to explain publicly to observers, to the public? Nikolai Bulaev answered that it was important to observe the regional representation during the selection. In addition, several people from the new composition of the TEC DEG worked in the previous compositions, Mr. Bulaev explained. It is unlikely that all members of the new composition of the TEC DEG have an education that allows them to be on “you” with the system, but the commission should include people of different professions, the deputy chairman of the CEC emphasized: “And lawyers, and sociologists, and political scientists who would be from different sides at the meetings of the TEC DEG, they determined the position on certain issues.” According to Nikolai Bulaev, the selected composition is the best and compromise option.

Also at the CEC meeting, the current statistics of online voting were announced. Thus, the DEG will be used for 381 campaigns, 1.2 thousand types of ballots will be generated in the system. There are 16.4 million potential online voters on the federal platform who have personal accounts linked to the voter register. True, only 446 thousand have so far applied to participate in the DEG, more than half of them in the Moscow region. In some regions, as of August 9, the number of applications for participation in the DEG does not even reach a thousand: for example, in the Tomsk region there are only 159 of them, in the NAO – 227, in the Orenburg region – 228, and in the Chelyabinsk region – 383.

Ella Pamfilova linked such dynamics with the low level of information on the part of the election commissions organizing the elections. “Colleagues, analyze what is the reason, maybe you are not doing enough to inform people,” she turned to the regional election commissions. “Strengthen the information component so that people know that they have such an opportunity.” But in this matter it is important not to go too far in order to avoid coercion, pressure on the voter, stressed the chairman of the CEC.

By the way, so far the Central Election Commission has received only one appeal with a complaint about coercion to participate in electronic voting, Ms. Pamfilova said. She read a letter from a woman from the Lipetsk region who complained that her boss was forcing her to register to participate in the DEG, because allegedly without this “he is not allowed to go on vacation.” Ella Pamfilova promised to look into this situation, including turning to the governor of the Lipetsk region.

Recall that applications for participation in the DEG are accepted on the Gosuslugi portal and will last until September 4, with the exception of Sverdlovsk (until September 5), Chelyabinsk and Tomsk regions (until September 6).

Elena Rozhkova