| The Central Election Commission decided to train electronic vote counting Two months after the presidential elections, the Russian Central Election Commission decided to once again check the automated vote counting system (GAS) “Elections”. Not because she doubts the effectiveness of her work, but because she likes the process itself.
Interdepartmental tests of the state automated system GAS "Elections" must be carried out before July 3, 2004. According to the Chairman of the Central Election Commission, Alexander Veshnyakov, “in trial operation, it was successfully used in the elections of State Duma deputies and the President of Russia, and in addition - in more than 120 regional and 660 local election campaigns, during two regional and ten local referendums.” And now these tests are necessary to accept the slightly modernized system into operation. They will sum up the implementation of the development program of the State Automated System “Elections” in 2001-2004, which cost the budget almost 2 billion rubles.
Modernizing the system does not involve using technology such as ballot scanners, which are promised to someday be included in all ballot boxes. Simply, as the head of the Federal Center for Informatization of the Central Election Commission of Russia, Viktor Yashchenko, told the Vremya Novostey newspaper, “GAS “Elections” is a “man-machine” system, both equipment and people who must train participate in it.” In the last Duma and presidential elections, the GAS “Elections” system was used only for preliminary vote counting. Several thousand employees entered data into computers and transmitted them simultaneously to three points - the district, regional and Central Election Commissions. Voters learned the preliminary voting results in the morning. But the official results were nevertheless summed up after manual counting of votes. Over time, Mr. Veshnyakov hopes to “legalize” electronic counting, eliminating human services if possible.
For successful training in six regions of Russia (Republic of Khakassia, Kaluga, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod regions, Moscow and St. Petersburg), employees of local election commissions simulate elections at all levels. Fictional parties and politicians will participate in them. And the Central Election Commission, the Ministry of Communications, and the State Standard will observe how the system reacts to the actions taken. To complete the picture, it is assumed that emergency situations will be introduced: cable break, power failure, failure of the system unit, operator error. True, Viktor Yashchenko assured that it is still impossible to bypass the system: “All hypotheses in this regard are completely absurd. For example, information on voting results comes through three different channels, and if the output data differs, this is noticeable. We have protected ourselves from power outages with uninterruptible power supply points. In practice there were no failures.”
Igor Yakovlev, a full member of the Academy of Political Sciences, commenting on the optimistic statements about the “honesty” of the GAS “Elections” system for the Vremya Novostey newspaper, said that it is impossible to control such complex equipment. Even if we do not take into account the possible interest of specific people in the voting results. “GAS “Elections” is a complex system consisting of computers, communication lines, and software. And at each of these levels, voluntary or involuntary mistakes are possible. In addition, so-called “bookmarks” or “bugs” cannot be ruled out, which are as difficult to track as the work of a hacker. The question is whether there are attackers within the personnel who created the system. And it was created by more than one hundred programmers and more than one thousand engineers,” noted Mr. Yakovlev.
But the head of the CEC, Alexander Veshnyakov, is calm about the security of the system: due to numerous attempts to hack the CEC website, which were made during the past federal election campaigns by both Russian and foreign hackers, the security of the system will be improved. And so that the State Automated System “Elections” does not stand idle, it will be used to sum up the results of various creative competitions. The organizers of the main Russian television award “TEFI” have already received an offer. Daria GUSEVA |
|
