a nationwide vote on amendments to the Constitution, introduced by President Vladimir Putin, is gradually approaching its finale. For the first four days, according to the CEC, and was attended by more than 40 million Russians, i.e. 37,2% of the total electorate. While electronic voting available to residents of Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod region, the turnout approaching 85 percent.
Reasons for such a high popularity that is remote will be explained, in all probability, several factors. First of all, the Russian capital at the level of digitalization takes the first place in the world. This, in particular, according to the respective ranking of the United Nations, published in 2019. Today’s Muscovites are used to interact with their government on the Internet — on the website mos.ru for example, today there are nine million private offices, opening easy access to a variety of possibilities, from appointment to payment of fines. Accustomed to remote receipt of services, the residents of Moscow without any problems and moved to electronic elections. Last year in the three electoral districts of the capital as an experiment voted via the Internet more than 10 thousand voters.
And once this summer in a variety of media and social networks were actively educated about the procedure and the rules of electronic voting on amendments to the Constitution, the turnout of participants in the first two days of the campaign exceeded 700 thousand people. On Monday this number rose to almost a million according to the official telegram-channel Public headquarters for control and monitoring of the national vote in Moscow, at 14 o’clock on June 29 were issued 1 002 874 e-newsletter, which amounted to 84,23% turnout of the total number of voters registered for remote voting.
it is Important to emphasize that full-time, and electronic voting is voluntary. Unlike some countries, literally driving its citizens to participate in the plebiscites under the threat of fines and even a ban on the civil service, the fundamental position of the Russian authorities is awareness and voluntary action of voting. The mayor of Moscow Sergey Sobyanin, speaking in a live TV channel “Russia 24”, said bluntly that “people should vote freely, no one should be forced. And who will force – will hit the hands.”
an equally important concern of the authorities were the transparency and purity of the vote. Responsible for the functionality of the remote will the Department of information technology of Moscow has been able to detect system vulnerabilities and eliminate them, making participation in e-voting is simple, comfortable and safe. After was launched the voting for amendments to the Constitutionand, the Public staff made additional checks of the electronic registry of voters, which would eliminate the possibility of double voting online and at polling station. Full reconciliation of the lists was carried out at night forces 10 thousand people, giving additional clarity and reliability of the system.
In the end, Moscow became a model for other regions of the country in the implementation of digital services for the population. Voting in electronic format, active outreach, which led to high turnout on remote voting, reliable control over the process that exclude outside influence on the results — all this can be considered a benchmark for future referendums, which, according to experts, will increasingly be organized in electronic format.
