The Communist Party will compete for offline – Newspaper Kommersant No. 243 (7444) of 12/29/2022

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation in the Altai Territory wants to conduct a popular poll to prevent remote electronic voting (DEV) in the 2023 gubernatorial elections. The corresponding statement, signed by 20 deputies, was sent to the regional legislative assembly, which has the right to appoint a poll. According to the communists, the DEG makes the elections non-transparent and creates the conditions for coercion to vote. In United Russia, this initiative was called “legislative extremism”, and the expert sees its reason in the fact that the DEG expands opportunities to attract non-communist electorate.

The CPRF faction sent a petition to the apparatus of the legislative assembly of the Altai Territory to conduct a regional public poll. The Communists want to ask voters if they agree that during the election of the Altai governor (scheduled for September 2023) “there should be no remote electronic voting.” The document is signed by 20 out of 21 members of the faction (deputy Pavel Mitrofanov did not sign the petition because he was absent for family reasons). The regional committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation expects that the decision to conduct a survey will be made by the session of parliament scheduled for January 26.

As explained in the regional committee of the Communist Party, the party has a number of claims to the DEG procedure. In the opinion of the Communists, with this method of expressing will, it is impossible to control the counting of votes and summing up the results of elections, there is no guarantee of maintaining the secrecy of the expression of will, and, moreover, conditions are created for coercion to vote. “If earlier the danger of using the DEG was illusory, then in 2023 the likelihood of using this form of voting in the region is especially high,” Anton Artsibashev, deputy head of the faction in the Legislative Assembly, told Kommersant.

United Russia controls 31 out of 68 mandates in the Altai parliament, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation – 21, A Just Russia – For Truth – 5, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Communists of Russia – 4 each, two more deputies remain outside the factions and one mandate is vacant. If the proposal of the Communist Party is supported by a majority of votes, the Legislative Assembly within 30 days will decide on the date of the poll. Its results will be of a recommendatory nature for “the adoption of rational decisions by the relevant state authorities of the Altai Territory”, indicated in the regional code on elections and referendums. Altai politicians interviewed by Kommersant admitted that they do not remember cases of such polls being conducted in the region.

“The initiative of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation became known only on December 28, so we have yet to give it a legal assessment,” Denis Goloborodko, vice speaker of the Legislative Assembly of United Russia, told Kommersant. the implementation procedure is not regulated in sufficient detail. There is no serious legal basis for the so-called popular poll at the federal level. This is a kind of “legal rudiment” of our regional law, the relevance of which today raises questions. There was a similar story with the norm on the recall of a deputy, which we recently excluded from the code.” According to the vice-speaker, in fact the Communist Party of the Russian Federation proposes to conduct an expensive sociological study at the expense of the budget. “In fact, there is no subject for discussion yet, and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is already working to delegitimize the institutions of power and, in principle, the electoral system. This already looks like some kind of “legislative extremism”, which, of course, does not do credit to the authors of the initiative,” Mr. Goloborodko believes.

As Irina Akimova, chairman of the Election Commission of the Altai Territory, explained to Kommersant, the decision to hold a DEG in the gubernatorial elections is made in agreement with the Central Election Commission. “The current legislation does not establish specific deadlines for the election commission to take a decision on holding a DEG, they are determined by election commissions based on the need for legal regulation and organizational and technical preparation of the DEG procedure,” she added.

It should be noted that the election commissions of some regions, where gubernatorial elections will also be held in September 2023, have already begun to submit applications to the CEC for holding a DEG. In particular, the Pskov region sent such an application, Igor Sopov, chairman of the regional election committee, told local media on Wednesday. In total, direct elections of governors are planned in 20 subjects, in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug the parliament will choose the head, and the format for electing the heads of new regions (DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions) has not yet been determined.

In Siberia, DEG was used in 2022 in the election of the governor of the Tomsk region. Then the candidate from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Andrei Petrov during the campaign also spoke out against online voting. According to the CEC, 21,200 voters took advantage of the DEG, but its results did not differ much from the general ones: Vladimir Mazur, elected governor of United Russia, won 88% of the votes according to the results of the DEG and 85% overall.

This is not the first initiative of the Altai communists related to the 2023 gubernatorial elections. For example, in early December, the head of the regional committee, State Duma deputy Maria Prusakova said that the Communist Party faction intended to seek to reduce the municipal filter from the current 7% to 5%. And on December 24, she launched a poll on her Telegram channel “Who will the Communist Party of the Russian Federation nominate as a candidate for governor of the Altai Territory in 2023?”. So far, Mrs. Prusakova herself (40%) and the presidential candidate from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in the 2018 elections Pavel Grudinin (33%) are leading in it by a wide margin.

Recall that United Russia Viktor Tomenko, who won the 2018 elections with 53.6% of the vote, is now in charge of the Altai Territory. Liberal Democrat Vladimir Semyonov was second at the time (16.2%), and the Communists did not take part in the race, saying that they would not be able to overcome the municipal filter.

The DEG does not necessarily play into the hands of only the party in power, in this way it is possible to organize a protest vote, says Inna Vetrenko, head of the department of social technologies at the North-Western Institute of Management of the RANEPA. “The DEG expands the possibility of increasing turnout, especially for the electorate, which is usually passive in terms of visiting polling stations, these are young people and middle-aged people. Electronic voting for them will look attractive and accessible. That is, the DEG will increase the turnout of those who are not the electorate of the Communist Party,” the expert explains.

Valery Lavsky, Novosibirsk