Testing of the online voting system in Moscow is scheduled for March 2

The public election monitoring headquarters in Moscow set a date for test electronic voting on Monday before the presidential election: it will take place on March 2 from 10:00 to 14:00. Voters will be asked to answer the question: “Is it necessary to cut down poplar trees in Moscow to get rid of poplar fluff?” There will be three possible answers: cut down and plant other trees in their place; do not cut down; leave the decision to the experts. To test the system, they try to select questions that evoke a significant response from Muscovites, explained the head of the headquarters, Vadim Kovalev. The wishes of the townspeople will be transferred to the city authorities “for making management decisions.”

The remote electronic voting system is being prepared for a stress test, Artem Kostyrko, head of the department for improving territorial management and developing smart projects of the Moscow government, said at a meeting of the headquarters. After all, voting in presidential elections is an event of unprecedented scale, he emphasized. 4.5 million Muscovites took part in the 2018 presidential elections, and this was an absolute turnout record for the capital. Moscow’s electronic services are designed for a fairly high load, the official said: currently approximately 3 million visits are recorded per day, this is a standard operating mode that practically does not cause disruptions. But there is reason to expect hacker attacks and so-called parasitic traffic, which will coincide with the increased interest of ordinary users at the beginning of voting. In the 2023 mayoral elections, Mr. Kostyrko recalled, about 500 thousand voters voted in the first few hours. This is an unprecedented burden, comparable only to purchasing tickets for World Cup matches, when the waiting time for some fans reached several hours. In Moscow, they won’t make you wait for four hours, Artem Kostyrko reassured, but the delay can reach several minutes. And if someone sees an hourglass on the screen, then “this is not a glitch, but absolutely normal operation,” a city hall employee warned.

Chairman of the Moscow City Election Commission Olga Kirillova recalled that in the Moscow mayoral elections in September last year, online voting and voting using electronic terminals was chosen by more than 80% of voters, so “consciously or unwillingly, emphasis should be placed on this difficult tool.” The capital also uses an electronic voter list, thanks to which you can vote online without prior registration. In addition, 146 regular polling stations will also be involved in the test voting – one for each district.

Moscow City Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Ekaterina Engalycheva complained that during the mayoral elections, voters who came to the polling station often forgot to ask how exactly they wanted to vote: through a terminal or with a paper ballot. As a result, conflict situations arose when, having received an electronic newsletter, a person began to demand a paper one, but could no longer receive it. “How do you instruct commission members – should they ask a person how he wants to vote? So that these conflict situations don’t exist at all: if a person wants a paper one, let them immediately give him a paper one, why do they make a decision for him?” It would be good to resolve this problem at the level of the Moscow City Election Commission, the deputy insisted.

Indeed, in some areas we had to deal with people being forced to approach the terminal, Olga Kirillova self-critically confirmed. They paid attention to this, and now they plan to divide the flow of voters from the very beginning. “Here the choice remains with the voter himself – whichever method he prefers is the one he uses,” assured the chairman of the commission.

In such a case, they even made a special button for election commission employees, added Artem Kostyrko: now, if a person who was directed to the terminal for electronic voting realized along the way that he was going the wrong way, he can return and demand a paper ballot – until he himself leaned passport to the terminal and did not scan it, the ballot is not considered issued. Such a voter will only have to sign again – this time for issuing a paper ballot. But it is still better to carry out additional work with the members of the commissions so that they do not hesitate to once again ask the person which voting method is preferable for him, insisted State Duma deputy from the LDPR and former candidate for mayor of Moscow Boris Chernyshov. “There is only one analogy here: a person went to a store and was asked how you would pay, in cash or by card?” – he drew a parallel.

Online voting in Moscow has been tested for a long time and has already become the norm, says Alexey Chesnakov, head of the scientific council of the Center for Political Conjuncture. If this time the record for the number of participants is broken, then, in his opinion, it will be necessary to record a final and irrevocable change in favor of new technologies. “Apparently, the queue of applicants will be huge,” the expert predicts in his Telegram channel. True, to attract a wider mass of interested people, one could ask a question not about poplars, but about something more exciting and dangerous – for example, about electric scooters, the political scientist adds.

Anastasia Kornya