At the polling station. Photo: Victoria Odissonova/Novaya Gazeta
This is not the first time that laws that are fundamental to the authorities have been adopted under the guise, when public attention is diverted to others.
And now, when the danger of a new war with Ukraine became topic No. 1, a law was almost imperceptibly passed that could radically increase the possibilities for electoral fraud with impunity.
United Russia deputies Dmitry Vyatkin and Dmitry Lameikin proposed amending the federal law «On the Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights and the Right to Participate in a Referendum of Citizens of the Russian Federation», establishing uniform rules for holding elections at all levels of «remote electronic voting» (DEV).
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Their draft was adopted in the first reading with 296 votes in favor and 74 against. United Russia, Zhirinovtsy and New People voted “for” (increasingly identifying with the party of power: earlier they also supported the Klishas-Krasheninnikov law on the actual destruction of local government), “against” — the communists and the “SRs”. Until February 24, amendments will be collected for the second reading.
Now the DEG is mentioned in the law, but very succinctly: it is only indicated that it can be used «in the cases and in the manner established by the Central Election Commission,» without any specifics. In 2019-2021, the CEC held such elections «as an experiment» in different regions, including in Moscow, in the elections of the State Duma and the Moscow City Duma in 2021.
Now it is proposed to introduce a separate article into the law, describing DEG. True, which is quite characteristic, in this article
there is not a word about the possibility of public control over the course and determination of the results of the DEG.
What is proposed?
The decision to conduct The DEG in elections is adopted by the relevant election commission:
- in federal elections — the CEC,
- at regional and local elections — by the regional election commission in agreement with the CEC.
The CEC approves the DEG procedure for federal, regional and local elections (if federal state information systems are used for the DEG). If regional state information systems are used in regional and local elections, the voting procedure is approved by the regional election commission.
If the decision to use the DEG is made, the voter who wants to vote electronically «applies to a special portal on the Internet, determined in the order of remote voting, and goes through the procedures of identification and authentication, as well as identity confirmation, after which he gets access to remote electronic voting.» In this case, this voter is excluded from the paper lists of voters voting at the polling stations.
All submitted applications are checked and compared with the data of the GAS «Vybory», after which the lists of participants in the DEG are formed.
< p>In the course of the DEG, “an anonymization procedure is carried out, after which a transition is made to the electronic ballot and an opportunity is provided, after familiarization with the necessary information and the procedure for filling it out, to express will by putting a mark in electronic form in the box relating to the position in favor of which the choice was made.”
Further, during the DEG, “the anonymized results of the expression of will, as they are formed, are immediately encrypted and stored in encrypted form in the chain of information blocks in the corresponding database. The results of the declaration of will are encrypted using the encryption key. Decryption of the results of the expression of will using the encryption key is not possible. After voting is completed, the results of the will are decrypted using the decryption key.»
