How online voting expanded in Russia – Kommersant

For the first time, online voting in Russia was used in 2019 in the elections to the Moscow City Duma in three single-mandate constituencies. Moscow has its own DEG platform, the rest of the regions vote through the federal platform, which is operated by Rostelecom. At the beginning of each year, subjects wishing to host online voting submit applications to the CEC, which selects the regions most ready for this, first of all assessing the level of Internet coverage and the number of users of the State Services portal.

The federal platform was first tested in 2020 in the Kursk and Yaroslavl regions, where by-elections to the State Duma were held in single-member districts. In 2021, six regions have already voted through the DEG federal platform: the Yaroslavl and Kursk regions were joined by the Nizhny Novgorod, Murmansk and Rostov regions, as well as Sevastopol. All of them are located in the same time zone, but at the same time, the DEG was used for the first time at two levels of elections: federal and regional (deputies of legislative assemblies were elected in the Murmansk, Nizhny Novgorod and Kursk regions).

In 2022, the DEG was already used by seven regions in three time zones: in addition to the Kursk and Yaroslavl regions, it was tested by the Kaliningrad, Novgorod, Pskov, Kaluga and Tomsk regions. In the same year, it became possible to use the DEG only in municipal campaigns: in the Pskov region, the heads of districts and more than 500 municipal deputies were elected, and in total 28 campaigns took place there. In the Kaliningrad, Novgorod, Yaroslavl and Tomsk regions, governors were elected through the DEG for the first time.

In 2023, the CEC, as of mid-March, received applications from 25 regions: if all of them are approved, then the DEG will be held in seven time zones. 20 out of 25 applicants are “newcomers”: these are Karelia, Crimea, Khakassia and Chuvashia, Arkhangelsk, Belgorod, Vladimir, Voronezh, Kirov, Leningrad, Lipetsk, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Orenburg, Omsk, Samara, Ulyanovsk regions, as well as the Nenets Autonomous district, Perm and Trans-Baikal Territories. True, the government of Khakassia, headed by communist Valentin Konovalov, opposed the use of the DEG in the elections for the head of the republic, citing the “lack of high-quality Internet in remote areas.” The CEC will approve the final list of regions for the DEG in June.

Elena Rozhkova