Translated material
User Churov
The Central Election Commission engaged in virtual campaigning and propaganda
The Central Election Commission of Russia continues to explore the Internet . Recently, this department signed a contract with bloggers Samson Sholademi and Inna Smbatyan. According to the contract, they must provide coverage of the CEC’s work on the Internet in human, accessible language. The result of this cooperation was the emergence of the Electoral Commission community in the Live Journal (LJ) blogging system. Yesterday, Sholademi, Smbatyan and CEC member Igor Borisov shared with journalists the first results of the work and their views on the role of the Internet as a means of agitation and propaganda. One of the most famous Internet figures in Russia, head of the blog service of the Soup company, Anton Nosik, also gave his assessment of the situation.CEC member Igor Borisov first spoke about the department’s own website, which, according to him, since the beginning of the election campaign has come out on top in terms of traffic among government websites. Every day the volume of the CEC website increases by 5 megabytes. According to Mr. Borisov, in addition to the website of the Central Election Commission, 86 websites of election commissions of the constituent entities of the federation are active. The CEC representative noted that there are currently about 30 million Internet users in Russia. “On average, almost every family has the opportunity to use the Internet. But for the subjects of the federation the figures are different. The Internet is most popular in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Where traffic is expensive, only the elite use the Internet,” Mr. Borisov demonstrated knowledge of the problem.
Then the conversation turned to the Electoral Commission community, which, according to the leaders of this project, is intended to become a link between the Central Election Commission and ordinary people. This resource was created on the initiative of the Chairman of the Central Election Commission of Russia Vladimir Churov. “Here you can talk about violations of election legislation in the regions and ask questions to Churov, we will pass them on to him. We meet with him every week and talk about the work done,” said Inna Smbatyan.
“The form of communication in the community is free. Of course, there is also obscene language, how could we avoid it?” - Samson Sholademi continued. He also said that four members of the Central Election Commission, headed by Mr. Churov himself, started blogs for themselves, but decided not to disclose them incognito until the State Duma elections. For now, they just read the community and sometimes engage in conversations with its members. “There is a user on LiveJournal, Churov, but this is someone’s virtual. The real Churov has a different name for his blog,” said Mr. Sholademi.
As for the representation of different parties in the Electoral Commission community, it turned out that the majority of users in it are from the Union of Right Forces, Yabloko and the People's Union.
Anton Nosik praised the Central Election Commission for its attempts to master the World Wide Web. “The Internet is the norm of our life. But when you come to some EIRTS - a former housing office or even a bank, you see that there is often not only no Internet, but even computers. There are forms and a pen. Against this background, it is especially pleasant when individual departments discover that the Internet exists,” said Mr. Nosik. In his opinion, the most necessary thing that should be on the CEC website is information for each person where his polling station is located. At the same time, he noted that the term “agitation and propaganda on the Internet” is a “dangerous legal innovation.” Speaking about the blogosphere population as a whole, the head of the blogging service at the Soup company noted: “The Internet presents a very extensive panopticon. The more marginal the participants, the more active they are.”
A certain Vladimir Vekselman, a registered candidate from a party that he himself refused to name, addressed the participants of the press conference with a question. The candidate was interested in when, according to the law, he would be able to start mass mailing (when one of the participants uttered the clarifying term “spam”, he was slightly offended). Igor Borisov allowed Mr. Vekselman to start mailing now - the main thing is that this “spam” was paid for from his election fund. “And this way you can call all your friends at night,” Mr. Borisov explained.