Politicians and experts talked about the prospects of electronic voting

United Russia on Tuesday invited parliamentary parties and experts to discuss the results and further plans for the use of remote electronic voting (DEG) in a round table format. After all, “it’s impossible to live without numbers, and in the future it will become deadly,” the head of the central executive committee of the party, Alexander Sidyakin, explained to the audience. As it turned out during the discussion, not only voters, but also observers and even agitators are switching to digital. True, in the regions this process is not as intense as in the capital.

In September 2024, there will be a large-scale election campaign in the regions, recalled Sergei Perminov, Deputy Secretary of the General Council of United Russia (UR), while opening the round table. But even earlier, during the March presidential elections, Russia will have to answer the main question that will determine the dynamics of its development for the next six years. “In conditions of fierce geopolitical competition, we will make this choice and must make it in such a way that no one has any doubt that it was fair, it was legitimate, it was fair, it was according to the law,” the party member noted.

He later explained to Kommersant that technologies are now developing by leaps and bounds, which means that technologies such as DEG will also develop in leaps and bounds and we need to be prepared for this. “That’s why it was important for us to understand at what point in our ability to use these technologies we and our colleagues are and where are the vectors demanded by society and time for moving forward. We will take steps in these directions in the coming months, on the eve of 2024,” said the United Russia member.

Deputy Chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC) Nikolai Bulaev told the discussion participants that the CEC does not see the need to adjust the legislation on DEG: everything that is necessary is fully regulated by the current laws. Almost 4 million voters vote on DEG platforms today, and half of them are in Moscow. Turnout in elections in almost all regions of the Russian Federation where DEG was used was higher than during the 2018 campaigns in the same regions, with the exception of the elections for the governor of the Altai Territory. A comparison of the candidates’ results obtained during the DEG and voting at polling stations did not show “a discrepancy that would raise questions for the organizers of the election campaign,” Mr. Bulaev emphasized. At the same time, observers were not even able to realize all the opportunities they had to access transaction downloads: in particular, only 200 observers used access to the authorized observation zone on the State Services website, although 16 thousand people could have received it.

As for the use of DEG in 2024, no final decision has been made yet, said the deputy chairman of the Central Election Commission. However, he added, 30 regions with 49 million voters have experience in using DEG, and all of them are possible participants in electronic voting in the presidential elections. The CEC considers the main problem to be a large number (10 million out of 49 million) of outdated voter accounts whose owners cannot vote online. But the CEC is already working on solving this problem together with the Ministry of Digital Development.

“It’s impossible to live without numbers, and in the future it will become deadly,” assured Alexander Sidyakin, head of the central executive committee and deputy secretary of the United Russia General Council. According to him, the number of participants in the DEG leaves the party no other choice but to form a digital profile of its voter: currently there are 24 million people in the mobilization base of United Russia supporters, and it is planned to increase their number to 33 million.

Observers are also going online. The executive director of the Independent Public Monitoring (IPM) association, Alena Bulgakova, said that during the elections in September 2023, 41,300 messages were processed using the NOM mobile application, including 80 about violations. “A Just Russia – For Truth” also has its own application for observers, noted Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, adviser to the party chairman. True, she added, the chatbot turned out to be “simpler and more convenient,” so the Socialist Revolutionaries decided to develop this particular direction.

In the 2023 Moscow mayoral elections, 83% of voters who took part in the voting took advantage of the DEG, recalled, in turn, the head of the department for improving territorial management and developing smart projects of the capital government, Artem Kostyrko. He explained such a high figure by the fact that Muscovites have long been accustomed to the online format. True, as the head of the Moscow branch of the New People party, Anna Drobot, pointed out, “certain factors” still had a negative impact on the level of trust in the DEG: in particular, voters who came to the polling stations were persistently recommended to vote through electronic terminals. It is clear that this option is more convenient for commission members, but for those who have doubts, this served as additional confirmation of them, the politician reasoned.

Finally, Yuri Satirov, Deputy General Director for Digitalization of Electoral Processes at RT Labs JSC, said that on election days, the bulk of requests to the Central Election Commission and the Ministry of Digital Development were due to the fact that people could not understand where to vote, and tried to do it on the portal “ State services” – in the same place where you previously registered for the DEG. On voting days, almost 1.5 million voters logged into their personal accounts at government services, and in the call center the main question was “Where is the button?”, Mr. Satirov said. This, in his opinion, suggests that the electronic voting portal needs additional advertising, and the DEG procedure itself should become even simpler and more understandable.

United Russia really likes the DEG technology, and most likely, with this round table they wanted to publicly demonstrate that they are experts in the format of electronic elections, says a Kommersant source close to the presidential administration. In fact, according to him, there are some problems with the DEG, primarily in terms of trust in this form of expression of will, because ordinary voters do not fully understand how this system works technically. “The trust delta compared to offline voting is not very optimistic yet. But this, of course, is not for a public discussion,” adds Kommersant’s interlocutor.

Anastasia Kornya, Andrey Vinokurov