The last test is the easiest one

On Wednesday, the Central Election Commission and the Public Chamber of Moscow summed up the results of testing online voting systems – federal and metropolitan. Both, the organizers reported, worked normally: the result was calculated, no failures were recorded. But not everyone was able to pass the test at local election commissions. As it turns out, some of their members are still unaware that even after being directed to an electronic terminal at a polling station, a voter can opt out of voting online.

On March 6, the Territorial Electoral Commission for Remote Electronic Voting (TEK DEG) summed up the results of a two-day training session. It ended with the victory of Andrei Nikolaevich Kandidatov, who was number 1 on the ballot: 32% of voters who took part in the voting voted for him. The results of the remaining candidates (Gleb Egorovich, Konstantin Petrovich and Pyotr Vasilyevich Kandidatov) ranged from 18% to 29%.

In the case of real elections, this would mean a second round, but this time the chairman of the TEC DEG Oleg Artamonov simply announced the successful completion of the training. “The testing was completed, no failures were recorded, the system worked stably,” he stated.

Most of the appeals to the election commission were related to situations where the voter’s data indicated in the application for participation in the DEG did not coincide with the data of the voter register and the unified identification and authentication system. In this case, they were recommended to contact the election commission with an application to compare the data, explained the chairman of the TEC DEG: there is still time to put the records in order.

According to Mr. Artamonov, the current training was carried out primarily for voters who had the opportunity to test DEG in conditions as close as possible to real ones. The system itself was tested, including under maximum load, in the fall of 2023, and there was no doubt about the correctness of its operation. Any voter who had previously registered to participate in the DEG for the presidential election could take part in the training on March 5–6. There were more than 3.5 million of them, 537,120 of them (that is, about 15%) took part in testing, and the Moscow region showed the highest activity, where almost 181 thousand people voted. Also during the testing, technical surveillance instruments were checked, said Oleg Artamonov, and no problems were found in this part either.

At the same time, the TEC DEG decided on the work schedule for the presidential elections (duty shifts will work from 8:00 to 20:00) and on the algorithm for generating the DEG key. As in previous elections, it will be divided into seven parts, the procedure will be public and will take place in the atrium of the Central Election Commission.

Also on March 6, the results of the training of the capital’s DEG system were summed up by the Public Headquarters for Observing Elections in Moscow. The training itself took place on March 2 for four hours: the time was specially limited in order to get the maximum load on the system, explained the head of the department for improving territorial management and developing smart projects of the Moscow government, Artem Kostyrko.

And this was achieved: out of 717 thousand voters who took part in the voting (remember, Muscovites were asked to answer the question whether poplars should be cut down in the city), 400 thousand voted in the first hour, and in the first minutes the number of people willing to vote reached 30 thousand people.

By a small margin (37%), the proposal to cut down poplars and plant trees of other species won in their place.

This time, in order to avoid “crush at the entrance,” an electronic queue was provided in the system, Mr. Kostyrko recalled. In case of a delay in processing the ballot, the voter saw an hourglass image on the screen, and the maximum time waiting for their turn, according to the organizers, was 10–15 minutes. In this regard, citizens were urged not to be afraid of such situations during real elections: it is assumed that the electronic queue will save the system not only in the event of a large influx of people wanting to vote early in the morning, but also in the event of DDOS attacks.

Members of the headquarters also shared their impressions of their participation in the training: they were pleased with the cleared paths to the sites and the number of people who came there. True, the former Deputy Minister of Communications, and now the Chairman of the Commission for the Development of Domestic IT Solutions and Technologies in the “Smart City” concept of the Moscow Public Chamber, Ilya Massukh, also found reason for criticism. According to him, members of election commissions still do not know that even after directing a voter to an electronic terminal, he can refuse to vote online. At least in the commission in the Don region where Mr. Massukh voted, they did not know about this, and when he pretended to change his mind, they resolutely declared: “No, that’s all.” Meanwhile, as Artem Kostyrko previously explained, the system fundamentally provides for the possibility of replacing an electronic ballot with a paper one – at least until the voter scans his passport at the voting terminal.

Maybe even members of election commissions should be required to ask voters how they want to vote, suggested a member of the headquarters, journalist Kirill Shulika. It’s not that there were very many cases of refusal, he made a reservation, but those that were made quite a lot of noise. “The human factor,” Olga Kirillova, chairwoman of the Moscow City Election Commission, sighed sadly. She confirmed that during the last campaign, commission members put too much pressure on voters. But now explanatory work has been carried out with them, and the choice of voting method should, of course, remain with the voter, she promised.

Anastasia Kornya