Young-electronic – Newspaper Kommersant No. 12 (7457) dated 01/24/2023
[ad_1]
Chairwoman of the Central Election Commission (CEC) Ella Pamfilova on Monday delivered a lecture to students of Russian universities on the main directions of the development of the electoral system. This event preceded the signing of an agreement between the CEC and the Russian Youth Union on cooperation in the field of legal education of young people. As Ms. Pamfilova said, despite the fact that the CEC does not intend to abandon the traditional voting method, the main emphasis will be placed on digitalization. She called the main task to increase the level of trust in remote electronic voting, inviting active students to think together about the correct wording to inform society.
Ella Pamfilova’s hour-long lecture at the building of the Russian Youth Union was timed to coincide with the upcoming Day of Russian Students, which is traditionally celebrated on January 25th. Answering questions from the audience, the head of the CEC outlined the contours of the development of the electoral system in Russia for the coming years. According to her, no one is going to abandon the traditional types of “paper” expression of will at polling stations – the CEC will “modernize” them, but the future belongs to digitalization anyway. The main task now facing the Russian electoral system is to increase confidence in new electronic technologies, especially in remote electronic voting (DEG), Ms. Pamfilova said. To do this, she explained, it is necessary to “promote and tell in understandable language what kind of “black box” it is: it is not clear what is at the input and what is at the output.” The CEC Chairwoman even invited the students gathered in the hall to think together about finding the “right words” that would help increase confidence in electronic elections. The Central Election Commission, according to Ella Pamfilova, intends to develop the DEG in all regions of Russia in the future.
Also in the plans of the CEC is the introduction of an electronic register of voters in the federal system of the DEG. Recall that for the first time this option was tested in Moscow at the municipal elections held in 2022. The electronic voter register allows citizens to choose a convenient way for them to express their will – electronic or traditional – directly on voting days, while there is no need to apply in advance for participation in the DEG.
In addition, the Central Election Commission is awaiting a legislative decision that will allow candidates in federal elections to collect voters’ signatures in electronic form through the State Services portal. Now the law “On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights” allows the electronic collection of signatures only in elections to regional authorities. The number of signatures collected online must be specified in the law of the subject of the Russian Federation, but it cannot exceed 50% of the total number of autographs required for candidate registration. Recall that the next federal campaign in Russia is scheduled for March 2024 – this is the presidential election.
After the lecture, Ella Pamfilova and the head of the Russian Youth Union, Pavel Krasnorutsky, signed an agreement on cooperation in the field of legal education of young people. The purpose of this document is to increase the “civic legal awareness and legal culture of young voters” in the field of the electoral process, as well as the interest of young people in participating in this activity.
It should be noted that on the same day, January 23, the State Duma Committee on State Construction and Legislation decided to return to the authors due to the lack of government recall a bill to reduce the age at which a citizen receives the right to vote from the current 18 to 16 years. Corresponding amendments to the law on guarantees of electoral rights have been introduced to the Duma not for the first time by deputies from the LDPR faction. In their opinion, lowering the voting age would help “involve young people in the electoral process, as well as increase the turnout in the elections.” “Many young people are now “maturing” much earlier than is commonly believed, so giving citizens political rights can be considered quite reasonable,” the explanatory note to the project says.
United Russia urged to actively look for friends abroad
On January 23, a meeting of the bureau of the Supreme Council of United Russia (ER) was held under the chairmanship of party leader Dmitry Medvedev, at which United Russia summed up the results of 2022 and outlined plans for 2023. In his opening speech, Mr. Medvedev thanked the party members for their active participation in the life of the country during the special military operation, separately mentioning the work of the party headquarters and the prompt adoption by the UR Duma faction of laws to counteract anti-Russian sanctions.
The main part of the EP chairman’s speech was devoted to the international situation. He said that according to the results of last year, it became completely clear “who is our friend, who is ours, and with whom we finally ended up on the other pole.” In this regard, Dmitry Medvedev called on his colleagues to more active inter-party interaction with the parties of “friendly” states, including, in particular, organizations such as ASEAN, BRICS and the African Union. “Our party must help people in the world understand that a special military operation has become a forced and last resort response to the preparation of aggression by the United States of America and its satellites,” Mr. Medvedev said, adding that the world has come close to the threat of a third world war.
Noting that “the fight against an external enemy is now much more important for us than inter-party differences,” the politician suggested that United Russia think about how to help other “patriotic forces of our country” to build a dialogue with foreign partners ideologically close to them. As for those political forces that “are trying to take some other, anti-state position abroad,” they “in general should be eliminated from the political landscape,” Dmitry Medvedev said, concluding the public part of the event.
However, two well-informed interlocutors of Kommersant, close to the leadership of the United Russia, assure that the topic of combating anti-Russian forces was not discussed at the closed part of the bureau’s meeting and there are no plans to work it out at the legislative level. And one of the interlocutors described the words of the United Russia leader as a “metaphor”: “At the meeting, on the contrary, they talked about inter-party interaction with those parties that support the president’s policy.”
[ad_2]
Source link
