Only old people go to the DEG – Kommersant
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Remote electronic voting (DEV) in the presidential elections in 2024 will be able to use only those regions that by that time have already tested this type of expression of will. This was announced on Monday during a conversation with students in Khabarovsk by the head of the Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova. According to Kommersant’s calculations, if all applications for the DEG submitted this year by regional election commissions are approved, then no more than 32 subjects, that is, about a third of their total number, will be able to vote on the Internet in the presidential elections, although in 2020 Ms. Pamfilova did not rule out 100% online voting coverage by 2024. According to experts, the CEC may refuse newcomers due to the technical and organizational features of electronic elections, as well as because of the high cost of the widespread introduction of the DEG.
Chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC) Ella Pamfilova, at a meeting with students of the Pacific State University in Khabarovsk on April 24, said that the DEG in the presidential elections in 2024 will be held only in those regions of the Russian Federation where it has already been tested. “Not a single new region — one that has not yet held — will use remote electronic voting in presidential elections,” said Ms. Pamfilova (quoted by RIA Novosti). According to her, this is necessary for the CEC to understand “how well the region conducts this vote.”
This year, on a single voting day, September 10, no more than two dozen regions will be able to use the DEG, although about thirty applications have already been received, the head of the CEC said: “It will be a little more than two dozen according to all the criteria that they (regions.— “b”) must fulfill: Internet coverage, coverage of “Gosuslugi””. We have to move carefully on this issue, “because a lot of external hacker attacks,” she added.
Recall that the CEC at its meeting on March 15 named 25 regions that this year want to use the DEG through the federal platform in their elections. Relevant applications were sent by Karelia, Crimea, Khakassia and Chuvashia, Arkhangelsk, Belgorod, Vladimir, Voronezh, Kaliningrad, Kirov, Leningrad, Lipetsk, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Orenburg, Omsk, Pskov, Samara, Tomsk, Ulyanovsk and Yaroslavl regions, Nenets Autonomous district, Perm and Trans-Baikal Territories. Potentially, 23 million people can take part in the elections there, 17.7 million of whom have a verified account on the State Services portal. In total, 458 election campaigns will be held in these subjects, where 1,495 types of ballots will be issued. This list is not final and can be either supplemented or reduced, and the final list of regions with DEG will be approved in June after the official start of the election campaign.
Since 2019, when the DEG was used for the first time in an experimental mode in the elections to the Moscow City Duma, online voting has been tested, taking into account the capital, in 12 regions. If all DEG applications are approved this year, then 20 newcomers will be added to these 12 (in five of the 25 entities that expressed a desire to hold a DEG in 2023, online voting has already been applied), and thus, the experience of using DEG at one or another level of elections will potentially have 32 regions (see reference).
How online voting expanded in Russia
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.
The DEG federal platform was first tested in 2020 in two regions with the same level of campaigns (by-elections to the State Duma in single-member districts), then every year the task became more complicated, and in 2022 seven regions voted through it in three time zones and with different election level. The CEC leadership has repeatedly stated that the use of the DEG will be consistently expanded, and in December 2020, Ella Pamfilova did not rule out that online voting throughout the country could be carried out as early as the next federal campaign in 2024 (that is, in the presidential elections).
According to Oleg Artamonov, deputy chairman of the territorial election commission (TEC) of the DEG in the previous elections, there may be several reasons for not expanding the list of regions participating in the DEG in the presidential elections. “The first is the technical capabilities of Rostelecom as an operator of data centers in which the DEG system operates. The fact is that during the three-day voting, most people vote on the morning of the first day, and this at one particular moment creates a very high load on the data centers, ”Mr. Artamonov explains. Therefore, Rostelecom needs great efforts to distribute the capacities of existing data centers so that the system successfully copes with the load on the first day.
The second reason, according to the expert, is organizational: with the expansion of the use of the DEG, part of the powers of the centralized TEC DEG, which until 2023 was one and located in Moscow, must inevitably be delegated to the regions. “TIK DEG works as a single block with all regions, regardless of time zones and the number of voting days, and this creates organizational problems,” Oleg Artamonov notes. One of these problems is the removal or restoration of a candidate in the region the day before the start of voting. In addition, all regions want to start counting the results immediately, and not wait for the voting to end in the westernmost time zone, the expert emphasizes. “But before delegating powers to TECs in the regions, it is necessary to make sure that they cope with all the procedures. And I think that this is the main factor in the decision not to add new regions in the presidential elections,” concludes Oleg Artamonov.
Oleg Zakharov, a political strategist and former head of the Yaroslavl electoral committee, believes that two factors influenced the CEC’s decision not to allow newcomers to the DEG in the presidential elections: objective and unexpected. “Objectively, the increase in DEG requires technical capacities, equipment, programs and corresponding costs. I admit that with a multiple increase in the number of potential voters in the DEG, the cost of their votes increases not by a factor, but by many times, and the equipment has increased in price due to sanctions,” he explains. As for the unexpected factor, according to the expert, the skepticism of citizens in relation to the digitalization of elections may increase due to the recent decision to introduce electronic summonses to recruits sent through the State Services. “This does not add optimism to citizens in digitalization; it may be difficult to increase the number of online voters. But still, the first reason seems to me more weighty: it was necessary to keep the DEG at the same technical level, taking into account the requests from the interested regions, but switching to a comprehensive DEG, apparently, turned out to be too expensive, and now there is no extra money in the budget,” Mr. Zakharov sums up.
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