Moscow reported on its readiness for the Single Voting Day

Moscow polling stations are ready for the mayoral elections and are equipped with new electronic voting terminals, Vladimir Popov, secretary of the Moscow City Electoral Committee, said at a meeting of the Public Election Monitoring Headquarters on Tuesday. Votes cast through the terminals immediately enter the online voting system. According to the developers, these devices are interconnected via a secure network, interruptions in which are unlikely. Three such terminals will be installed at each polling station, but paper voting will be available in the same way as before, the organizers of the capital’s elections emphasize.

At the last meeting before the three-day voting that starts on September 8, the Moscow public headquarters heard a report from the Moscow City Electoral Committee (MGIK) on the readiness for the election of the mayor of the capital and municipal deputies of 13 districts of New Moscow. Recall that five candidates are running for the post of mayor: the current mayor Sergei Sobyanin (United Russia), Moscow City Duma deputy from the Communist Party Leonid Zyuganov, State Duma vice-speakers Boris Chernyshov (LDPR) and Vladislav Davankov (New People), as well as a State Duma deputy from “A Just Russia – For the Truth” Dmitry Gusev.

According to Vladimir Popov, secretary of the Moscow State Institute of Cinematography, all polling stations are ready for voting, including new equipment. We are talking about electronic voting terminals (TEG), which this year will appear for the first time in every metropolitan area. On August 25, a remote electronic voting system (DEG) was tested, including new devices, the votes from which immediately enter the DEG blockchain. According to Mr. Popov, the testing showed the efficiency of all 146 sites where the new terminals were tested.

The Secretary of the IPCC said that more than 30,000 members of election commissions have been trained and certified this year, all of them are allowed to work with the electronic voter register and TEG. The electronic register was first used in Moscow in 2022 at the municipal elections. This innovation made it possible to refuse pre-registration for the DEG, since now members of the commissions can immediately see whether a given voter has previously voted: if he has already cast his vote via the Internet, the system will not allow him to issue a paper ballot, and vice versa.

At each site, technical specialists will be on duty who will be able to quickly solve problems if they arise, Artem Kostyrko, head of the department for improving territorial administration and developing smart projects of the Moscow government, said at the meeting. On average, according to him, each polling station will have three stationary TEGs and three portable ones for home voting. But this does not cancel the opportunity to cast one’s vote in the traditional paper way, Mr. Kostyrko emphasized: the members of the election commissions will offer both options to the voters who came to the polling station. All new terminals, the official noted, are equipped with batteries in case of power failure, are autonomous from the global network and are connected in a “single ring” via a secure network, interruptions to which are possible only if “a bulldozer digs somewhere”. In case of failures, there is operational technical support and field teams of specialists.

Online voting through a gadget or computer will be available around the clock from 8:00 Friday to 19:59 Sunday, and TEG at polling stations – from 8:00 to 20:00 on each voting day. “But we recommend, if possible, not to vote in the very first hours of the elections, that is, on Friday morning. At this time, bursts of voter activity are observed: people prefer to vote immediately so as not to forget, and also receive reminders of the start of voting in the media, mailing lists and SMS. This may lead to the formation of an “electronic queue” for voting,” Artem Kostyrko warned.

It should be noted that in the previous elections in Moscow with the use of DEG (it has been used in the capital since 2019), in the first minutes of the elections, some users complained about the freezing of the mos.ru portal. The developers of the system explained this by a large one-time load, which creates “queues for the ballot”. By the way, this year voters will be able to access the e-voting page not only through the banner on mos.ru, but also via the direct link elec.mos.ru, which will be launched on September 8 at 08:00.

The time for the decryption of the results of the DEG in Moscow will depend on the number of its participants, Mr. Kostyrko continued: “According to the experience of last year and the already established practice, most likely everything will start at 20:15 on September 10, when we will connect the parts of the decryption key, upload it into the system. It will take some time to decipher the votes. According to the forecast, before 21:00 we do not expect results.” Recall that in the 2022 elections, about 1.7 million Muscovites voted through the DEG (about 700 thousand came to the polling stations), and in 2021 in the elections to the State Duma – 1.9 million.

Also, at yesterday’s meeting of the public headquarters, five “custodians” of the key were identified to decrypt the results of the DEG. Such a procedure is carried out annually: the key is divided into several parts and transferred to different people on flash drives, and at the end of the voting, the parts of the key are combined and the process of deciphering the votes begins. This year, the “custodians” will be Vadim Kovalev, head of the election observation headquarters, Igor Borisov, member of the Central Election Commission, Alexei Shaposhnikov, chairman of the Moscow City Duma, and Vladimir Dudochkin, head of the Council of Municipalities of Moscow. The fifth part of the key will go to one of the representatives of the IPMC: the commission will decide for itself who it will be. The key sharing procedure will take place on September 7 at the Moscow City Electoral Committee.

Elena Rozhkova