The Central Election Commission approved the progress of work on transferring the electoral system to a new digital platform

The Central Election Commission (CEC) on Wednesday approved the report of the Federal Center for Informatization (FCI) on the expenditure of 5.5 billion rubles. for the operation and development of the State Automated System (GAS) “Elections” last year. Most of these funds were spent on the construction and launch of a new digital platform, which is also called GAS “Elections” 2.0. But KOIBs (means of automatic vote counting) are becoming a thing of the past: they are increasingly malfunctioning, and failures, according to the Central Election Commission, raise suspicions among observers of violations.

As follows from the FCI report on the implementation of the action plan for the operation and development of the GAS “Elections” system over the past year, a total of 5.48 billion rubles were spent on this, of which almost 3.9 billion were allocated for the development of the new digital platform. Its commissioning into trial operation is planned before the end of 2024. The digital platform will definitely be used in the September elections in the regions, but the final decision on exactly how much remains to be made, Deputy Chairman of the Central Election Commission Nikolai Bulaev told Kommersant.

At a meeting of the Central Election Commission on April 10, the head of the FCI, Alexander Sokolchuk, said that last year, using the GAS “Elections,” 4,679 election campaigns of various levels were held, in which 89,630 candidates were nominated. All of them were checked using the interdepartmental electronic interaction system – in total, the State Automated System “Elections” receives 36 types of information through it. In addition, the Federal Tax Service (FTS) provides information on the income of candidates, their participation in commercial organizations and accounts in foreign banks, Rosreestr – on real estate, the Ministry of Internal Affairs – on criminal records and administrative liability, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – on the presence of foreign citizenship, the Ministry of Justice — about the status of a foreign agent (or a person affiliated with him), as well as about involvement in the activities of prohibited organizations. The Bank of Russia is formally responsible for information about accounts and deposits, but in fact, the Central Election Commission’s requests go to more than 400 financial organizations, Mr. Sokolchuk noted.

In addition, data on citizens included in the voter lists is constantly being updated: last year alone, more than 23 million events occurred with them that require recording in the register. The problem is that the information system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is one of the main suppliers of this data, “does not work stable enough,” the head of the FCI complained, and the data also has to be verified with the Unified System of Authorization and Authentication at State Services, and such a mechanism is too complicated . However, next year a unified federal information resource should appear on the basis of the Federal Tax Service, so it is time to begin preparing regulations for the exchange of information with this new structure, Mr. Sokolchuk indicated.

But the number of complexes for processing ballot papers (KOIP) is gradually decreasing: if in 2018 more than 22 thousand complexes were used in the elections, then in 2023 there were only about 7 thousand of them left. There were problems with the repair of KOIP, manufactured by the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, but already By the time of the presidential elections this year, most of them were returned to service, added Alexander Sokolchuk.

The equipment installed at the level of territorial and regional commissions began to be prepared last year for the transition to working with a new digital platform (GAS “Elections” 2.0), and this process is still ongoing. All-Russian training of the new platform will take place from April 15 to May 31. Also, on April 15, training for system administrators begins, upon completion of which they will receive certificates for permission to work with the digital platform. It is planned to be put into trial operation by the end of the year, although certain processes still require solutions. “Setting up a hotline is a crazy job that we haven’t figured out how to do yet,” admitted Mr. Sokolchuk. During the first training session, the first malfunction literally collapsed the internal communication system, he recalled.

The FCI report was approved unanimously by the Central Election Commission. At the same time, commission member Anton Lopatin suggested “seriously thinking” about the fate of the 2010 model KOIBs: the performance of this equipment raises serious questions, and failures make observers suspect violations. Nikolai Bulaev, in turn, demanded that resources be provided to prepare software for the new division of majoritarian districts, which must be approved before the 2026 State Duma elections. “We haven’t had such a significant recut for a long time. We have four new subjects of the federation, but the cutting of new single-mandate districts will affect the interests of not only these four: No one will change the Constitution and the number of districts will not change,” explained Mr. Bulaev (according to Article 95 of the Constitution, the State Duma “consists of 450 deputies” although the number of single-member constituencies is determined by election law).

Also at the meeting on April 10, the CEC decided to begin checking the one-time receipt of ballots for the presidential election among voters who submitted an application to vote at their location through the Mobile Voter service, but then returned to the polling station at their place of residence. The commission instructed the regions to check the lists and find out whether there were any cases of double voting. Anton Lopatin recalled that such a check is carried out after each federal campaign based on data from the State Automated System “Elections”, publications in the media and social networks, as well as appeals to the Central Election Commission. This time there were few such complaints, or rather just one, but they are dealing with it, a member of the Central Election Commission said. The votes of 4,630 voters will be verified at almost 7,000 polling stations in 89 regions and seven countries near and far abroad – in Armenia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Cyprus, the UAE, Turkey and Thailand.

Anastasia Kornya