The Public Chamber discussed methods of monitoring electronic voting

On Tuesday, the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation held a discussion of the procedure for monitoring remote electronic voting (DEG). Members of the Territorial Election Commission (TEC) of the DEG outlined the formats of possible control and announced the preparation of interested activists in the near future. Social activists rated the experts’ explanations very highly, concluding that the spread of DEG, as well as widespread digitalization, is unstoppable in principle.

Public discussion of electronic voting is still in demand even by the most knowledgeable politicized audience, he said, opening round table, its moderator, member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation and political scientist Alexander Asafov. The other day he attended a congress of Russian political scientists and shared an important observation: “Teachers of political disciplines, in the fifth year of the existence of the DEG, finally learned that such a format exists, and tried to treat it scientifically, blaming the problems with it on the anthropogenic factor, as they put it.” .

At the same time, colleagues’ ideas about electronic voting remain so vague that they even mentioned DEC instead of DEG in the presentation: “Therefore, it is important to talk about the transparency of DEG both for a wide range of voters and for political researchers and candidates.”

The spread of DEGs is an objective process within the framework of general digitalization, and the “rapid growth” in the number of regions using DEGs, like sociology, testifies to the confidence of voters in this form of voting, Mr. Asafov assured: “The criticism of DEGs, which we have repeatedly heard, is a political idea is being marginalized, and its main apologists are changing their rhetoric.”

Monitoring of online voting is being modernized along with the system, reported the head of the TEC DEG Oleg Artamonov. During the presidential elections, two observation methods will be used – remote and in-person.

Within the first, the observer gets access to the archives of blockchain transactions (that is, to all actions performed in the system), within the second – to the “observation node” (to the same data, but in real time), as well as the opportunity to “see and see in person” control the procedures that we carry out at the TEC,” explained Mr. Artamonov.

Remote observers can be appointed by candidates, their proxies, parties and public chambers, while in-person observers can only be appointed by candidates and their proxies (no more than three observers per candidate). Both have the right to contact the TEC chairman, and “remote workers” will be able to complain by email. “In case of disputes,” the information received by face-to-face observers “through the node” will be considered “primary and most verified,” the head of the TEC DEG emphasized.

Non-experts will also potentially have the opportunity to participate in the observation. According to TEC DEG operator Dmitry Kuznetsov, every voter will be able to check their vote count on the portal.

IT expert Pyotr Losev even announced the creation of a unified analytical database with easily visualized data. Also, representatives of TEC DEG announced their intention to conduct a series of webinars for everyone who would like to understand the intricacies of both on-site and remote monitoring of the procedure.

According to the head of the department of probability theory and applied mathematics at MTUSI, Konstantin Pankov, the cryptographic concepts that formed the basis of the DEG have been studied in detail by the academic community and “recognized as reliable.” Science, however, does not stand still, and the risk of new threats cannot be excluded, the scientist warned: “If quantum computers appear in the foreseeable future, then almost all encryption systems will be under threat.”

A joint search for solutions on issues where observers and the Central Election Commission (CEC) do not find mutual understanding is “an absolutely normal process,” CEC member Anton Lopatin emphasized at the end of the round table. “Of course, there are complaints, but this is completely normal, because this allows us to improve technology and observation tools,” he summed up optimistically.

As the online voting system develops, monitoring DEGs will become increasingly accessible to people without specialized technical training, suggests Alexander Asafov. “We have already seen the introduction of tools that interpret technical data, making it more understandable. And of course, in the future we will come to the development of these tools,” he assured the Kommersant correspondent.

Grigory Leiba