Communist Party submits draft law on abolishing electronic voting to Russian State Duma

A group of lawmakers from the KPRF headed by party leader Gennady Zyuganov have submitted a draft law to the State Duma that would abolish remote electronic voting in Russian elections.

An explanatory note to the bill states that September’s State Duma vote revealed serious shortcomings and flaws in the electronic voting system. In particular, the Communist Party lawmakers emphasize that the online voting results completely flipped the ballot count in Moscow, where opposition candidates were initially in the lead.

“State Duma candidates, members of the electoral commission for remote electronic voting, and observers reported that during the three-day election campaign there was [widespread] ‘stuffing’ of electronic votes, there were technical failures, [and] there was no access to the servers where voter data was located,” the note recalls.

In light of these and other alleged flaws, the KPRF’s bill proposes removing the provisions on electronic voting from the federal laws “On the election of State Duma deputies” and “On the basic guarantees of Russian citizens’ electoral rights,” until all shortcomings in the system are resolved.

• After the votes were tallied in September’s State Duma elections, the Communist Party accused the authorities of rigging the electronic voting results in Moscow. Though several KPRF candidates were leading by a wide margin in the capital’s single-mandate constituencies, they lost the elections to candidates backed by the Mayor’s Office after the online ballots were counted.
• In response, the KPRF staged two small protests in downtown Moscow, prompting a sweeping police crackdown in the days that followed. The Communist Party also challenged the electronic voting results in court.