In the 2024 presidential elections, remote electronic voting will be held in 29 regions
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In the 2024 presidential elections, remote electronic voting (DEG) will be held in 29 regions, the Central Election Commission (CEC) decided on Wednesday. 38 million people, that is, more than a third of all voters, will be able to participate. Nonresidents will also be able to vote through electronic terminals at polling stations in Moscow if they first register there through the Mobile Voter system. In total, eight state digital systems will be involved in the DEG, CEC member Evgeniy Kolyushin calculated.
It was initially planned that in the presidential elections online voting would be used only where it had already been used, recalled CEC Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova. There are 30 such regions, but 28 of them sent applications (except for the Tula and Orenburg regions). But an application was received from the Vologda region, where DEG had not been used before. But during a recent training session, local residents showed remarkable activity: almost 5% of voters signed up to participate in the test electronic voting, and 80% of those who signed up took part in it. These are very high figures, explained Ms. Pamfilova, and they make it possible to take the Vologda initiative seriously.
Applications for online voting in the regions can be submitted from January 29 to March 11, follows from the DEG procedure approved by the CEC. After this, if the voter does not withdraw the application by March 11, he will only be able to vote electronically. Therefore, in case of possible problems, most precinct commissions will install computers from which it will also be possible to vote remotely, Ella Pamfilova promised. In Moscow, which uses its own DEG system and electronic voter lists, there is no need to register for the DEG in advance.
And residents of other regions will also be able to vote in the capital electronically through mobile terminals if they first register through the Mobile Voter system.
The results of the DEGs in all subjects except the Kaliningrad region will begin to be summed up after 20:00 Moscow time, but the results will be published only after the completion of voting in the westernmost region (at 21:00 Moscow time).
To ensure online voting, the CEC will form a special territorial election commission (TEC) DEG of 12 people. It will include representatives of parties, the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation and public chambers of the regions, where they will vote electronically. The chairman of the commission will be appointed by the CEC, and his deputy and secretary will be elected by the members of the TEC DEG from among their members.
Deputy Minister of Digital Development of the Russian Federation Oleg Kachanov reported at the meeting that all state digital systems are ready for voting. The all-Russian DEG training, according to him, was successful: almost 3.7 million people signed up for it, of which 2.8 million voted. The chief architect of the DEG at Rostelecom PJSC, Yuri Satirov, added that the training was held with a record turnout of 76, 3%, but regional participants had virtually no problems.
Most of the issues were related to the delivery of confirmation codes via SMS, but they were resolved.
According to the co-chairman of the Coordination Council at the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation for public control over voting Oleg Artamonov, the Central Election Commission also took into account many proposals from IT experts. For example, there will now be a different status (and a different appointment procedure) for observers working directly in the TEC DEG and through the observation portal. It was also possible to resolve the issue of issuing certified copies of protocols on voting results to observers – they will be able to be produced not on paper, but on CDs. Mr. Artamonov assured that the Russian online voting system is already advanced from a technical point of view, and from a regulatory point of view, it will also sooner or later reach this level. “And plus there is not a single system that is so responsive to requests for feedback from society,” Ella Pamfilova added on her own behalf.
Only CEC member Evgeniy Kolyushin risked criticizing the DEG.
In terms of numbers, we are really ahead of the rest, he admitted, but online voting is still not properly included in the electoral legislation and a “purely technological approach” prevails.
Of the eight digital systems that are involved in the DEG, only one is legally controlled by the CEC, Mr. Kolyushin recalled, and the rest operate according to their own rules. “I am convinced that the current naive, in my opinion, propaganda of convenience for the individual hinders the disclosure and use of traditional collective social values of elections,” concluded the CEC member.
Colleagues, however, did not agree with Mr. Kolyushin. This is not about convenience for voters, this is a problem of the state fulfilling its constitutional duties to create proper guarantees for the implementation of active voting rights, said Boris Ebzeev, a member of the Central Election Commission. It is human nature to be wary of everything new, but there are political forces that exploit and politicize this property, commission member Andrei Shutov supported his colleague, and the task of the Central Election Commission is to stop all attempts to politicize these processes. As a result, the list of regions and the order of the DEGs were approved by 14 votes to one.
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