State Automated System “Elections” will teach how to verify citizens’ passport data with other databases

The Central Election Commission (CEC) will pay 13.6 million rubles. for proposals to improve the voter register, which is part of the State Automated System “Elections”, follows from the contract of the Federal Center for Informatization (FCI) under the Central Election Commission, published on the government procurement website. The result of modernization should be a new mechanism for interaction with interdepartmental databases, which will improve the quality of comparison of users’ personal data. The work will be carried out by the Voskhod Research Institute, subordinate to the Ministry of Digital Development, and the FCI expects to receive the results in the second half of April.

We are talking about voters whose account information on the State Services portal for some reason does not coincide with the information contained in the State Automated System (GAS) “Elections,” as follows from the terms of the purchase. Such a record is called “unmatched” and does not allow, among other things, registration to participate in remote electronic voting (DEV). It is believed that this most often occurs due to the fault of the voter himself, who did not update his data on State Services in time – for example, after replacing his passport.

But in fact, the voter register, which is formed on the basis of data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, also does not always contain the most up-to-date data. The Kommersant correspondent has personally encountered this: over the past few years, the GAS “Election” system has been persistently “relocating” her from the Moscow to the Bryansk region – despite her permanent registration in the Moscow region and passport data that has not changed over the past ten years. Moreover, while refusing registration for the DEG in this regard, Gosuslugi has not yet offered any solution to the problem.

Inaccuracies in databases are also often encountered by election candidates who have to collect voter signatures in support of them: such autographs, even if they are left by very real people, can be rejected citing discrepancies with the official databases of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or with the voter register of the State Automated System “Elections” “

According to the FCI, by the end of last year, 88.3 million out of 102.3 million accounts in the Unified Identification and Authentication System (USIA), which provides access to State Services, were fully matched with the register. As the head of the FCI, Alexander Sokolchuk, told Kommersant, they plan to improve the quality of data comparison by processing additional attributes: in particular, the system will have to verify the date of issue of the passport. If the information in the State Automated System “Elections” turns out to be more relevant, then the corresponding report will have to be sent to “Government Services,” as follows from the terms of reference for the procurement.

Oleg Artamonov, who headed the territorial election commission of the DEG in the recent presidential elections, says that unmatched voter records are a fairly common problem and possible solutions to it were discussed by the Central Election Commission several months ago. According to him, it becomes especially significant when elections are held on an electronic platform in Moscow and the Moscow region, where the percentage of voters voting online is high. The main difficulty is the lack of a clear database synchronization algorithm, the expert explains. That is, it is clear that the existing reconciliation mechanisms are not enough, but there is still no clear understanding of what should be a signal to trigger synchronization and what should be its result, that is, what data should ultimately be accepted as valid. The matter is complicated by the fact that we are talking about interdepartmental interaction, Mr. Artamonov adds: apparently, now the decision has finally been made to transfer the search to a formal plane, entrusting it to an expert organization.

Indeed, as follows from the contract with the Voskhod Research Institute, the contractor must develop proposals for amending the system agreement on the procedure for interaction between the subsystem “Register of Voters, Referendum Participants” of the State Automated System “Elections”, the Unified System of Interdepartmental Electronic Interaction and the Unified System of Identification and Authentication on the State Services portal – to ensure comparison of users’ personal data.

Political strategist Roman Smirnov notes that now election commissions are reluctant to process voters’ applications for clarification of their data. As a rule, such statements are written during voting, but the information is not taken into account for the next elections. The problem is that Gosuslugi and the voter register are practically in no way connected with each other, the expert explains, so data reconciliation is really necessary. Another thing is that active voters will find a way to vote in any case. But for others, data reconciliation may become an additional incentive to participate in elections, Mr. Smirnov believes.

Anastasia Kornya