Moscow has mastered remote voting – Newspaper Kommersant No. 167 (7368) of 09/12/2022

In Moscow on Sunday, elections to the councils of deputies of 125 intracity municipalities were completed. Already in the first hours of the three-day voting, which started on Friday, the turnout reached the level of the previous elections in 2017 (14.8%), and by Sunday evening it had grown to 32.8%. Most of the turnout was provided by Muscovites who voted electronically (more than 1.7 million people), half as many voters came to ordinary polling stations. The Moscow City Electoral Committee stated that the elections were held with virtually no violations; opposition representatives present their traditional claims to voting online.

On the evening of September 11, the Moscow City Electoral Committee reported that the results of the online voting in the municipal elections in the capital were summed up in less than an hour – this is an obvious progress compared to last year’s Duma elections, when the counting of votes cast on the Moscow DEG platform dragged on and caused a scandal. However, the first day of voting, September 9, as previously reported by “Kommersant”, overshadowed by a failure in the operation of an innovation introduced in the current elections in the capital – a passport scanning system. Reader freezes led to the fact that some of the voters who came to the polling stations could not receive ballots. In the public headquarters of Moscow for election observation, the problem was explained by DDoS attacks.

However, already in the first four hours of voting, voter turnout approached the indicators of the previous municipal elections in 2017 (14.8%), and by the end of Friday it exceeded them, amounting to 16.7%. As of 18:00 Sunday, the turnout was a record 32.8%. Such high performance was ensured by remote electronic voting (DEV), in which about 1.7 million Muscovites took part (on Sunday evening it was announced that 1,748,616 ballots were issued online and 1,692,196 votes were received). More than two times fewer voters reached the polling stations – according to preliminary data, about 700 thousand people. It should be noted that during last year’s Duma elections, about 2 million people voted online in Moscow, with a total turnout of about 43%. At that time, pre-registration was required to participate in the DEG; The electronic register of capital voters created for the current elections allowed citizens to spontaneously decide on the method of voting up to the closing of polling stations on the evening of September 11, while technically eliminating the possibility of voting both online and at the polling station.

Representatives of parliamentary parties interviewed by Kommersant, with the exception of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, did not record “any serious violations” in the elections in Moscow.

A different opinion was expressed by the communists, representatives of Yabloko and non-systemic self-nominated oppositionists. As expected, the most painful issue for them was the DEG, the results of which they called “anomalous” and achieved through “coercion of state employees.” Most of the complaints filed on this issue have traditionally come from the Communist Party. In particular, the communists were alarmed by the data on the distribution of votes in districts with different turnouts, which, in their opinion, indicate “vote stuffing”. Vadim Kovalyov, the head of the election observation headquarters, told Kommersant that everything was correct on the site for monitoring the course of the DEG, which was available to everyone. “Some colleagues came to our headquarters, I personally took them, we showed them how to look. People did not see detailed figures, but the turnout was high, but harmonious,” he said.

“Yabloko” focused on the pressure that was exerted on their candidates because of the criticism of the special operation in Ukraine. On the first day of the election, they complained about calls from unknown people who tried to “provoke candidates to speak out” about the special operation. In addition, the party said that “due to pressure, every fifth registered candidate was not allowed to participate in the elections.” Nikolai Kasyan, who ran in the Lomonosov district, was the last to run – the court removed him from the elections 18 hours before the vote.

However, there were also reverse situations. So, in the first two days of voting, the Supreme Court returned the candidate from Izmailovo, Tatyana Tsarenko, and the candidate from Livoberezhny, Alexandra Ivanova, to the elections. Appeals of candidates to restore their names on the ballots were ignored by the electoral commissions, and the DEG system did not at all imply such a procedure. However, Olga Kirillova, chairman of the IPEC, explained to Kommersant that, according to her information, such decisions were made on three candidates, and there was no decision on the need to return them to the ballot. It was only about canceling the decision of the lower instance and returning the case for a new trial, she assured.

According to the human rights project “OVD-Info” (included in the register of foreign agents), “Yabloko” leaders in the number of activists detained in connection with the elections. In total, 23 people were detained (of which 15 were participants in the electoral process), who were mainly accused of interfering with the work of commissions, illegally spreading campaigning, and holding actions that were not coordinated with the authorities.

According to the Golos movement (included in the register of foreign agents), among the most frequent violations in Moscow were pressure on candidates and observers, the inability to vote at a polling station due to participation in the DEG allegedly already recorded by the system, non-issuance of ballots (including for failures in the operation of the scanning system) and violation of the rules for conducting home-based voting.

The refusal to issue a ballot at the polling station, which in some cases complained about by citizens, was explained by the head of the IPCC Olga Kirillova as a human factor.

According to her, not all members of the commissions learned the material equally well during training, so sometimes they perceived the entry in the “Remote electronic voting is available” system as evidence that the person had already voted. The head of the election observation headquarters, Vadim Kovalev, in turn, told Kommersant that the observers did not record massive serious violations. According to him, about 100 controversial situations were considered at the headquarters, but only one serious violation was confirmed, when three ballots were dropped into the ballot box at once, but this ballot box “has already been sealed.”

Policy Division