The electoral system of Russia is moving in the opposite direction: from machine labor to manual

The CEC has adjusted the draft program for the accelerated technical re-equipment of the electoral system. They decided to abandon the re-equipment, especially the technical one: KOIBs will no longer be produced. The reason, they say in the CEC, is the reduction of the program budget to 3.3 billion rubles from 12.6 billion rubles.

The CEC has adjusted the draft program for the accelerated technical re-equipment of the electoral system. They decided to abandon the re-equipment, especially the technical one: KOIBs will no longer be produced. The reason, they say in the CEC, is the reduction of the program budget to 3.3 billion rubles from 12.6 billion rubles.

It is indicative that the decision to cut funding was actually made immediately after the unified voting day on September 8, the elections that both their organizers and top officials called the most honest, especially in Moscow. Even the observers admitted that they violated less.

It would seem that the authorities decided to use the administrative resource for good - and undertook to re-educate members of the territorial and precinct election commissions. All the more illogical now is the decision of the CEC.

About the numbers: according to the initial draft of the program, by 2015, KOIBs should have been at 62% of polling stations where 90% of Russian voters vote. Now new KOIBs will not be made. Only about 7% of plots can be equipped with old ones (almost 11 and a half thousand cars). Accelerated technical re-equipment is evident.

The reason (other than lack of funds) is that it is not clear what these new KOIBs could be. The CEC considered that the current complexes are capable of reading ballots no longer than 182 lines - 26 parties in two languages. Blame the law on parties, which simplified registration. Now (at least theoretically) there can be more than 26 participating parties, and all of them will not fit into the KOIB. So one initiative of the authorities neutralized another.

Although, in fairness, now talk about the participation in the elections of parties of all stripes in the amount of more than 26 is a utopia. So far, all participants who manage to pass the municipal filter and the barriers of local election commissions fit perfectly on the ballot.

Size matters

Novaya (and not only Novaya, but almost all unanimously) talked about the advantages of KOIBs more than once or twice. It's simple: at the moment this is really the best way to guarantee the transparency of the elections. Not 100 percent - smart people still find ways to "correct" the results using the same "carousels" and other tricks, but the results with KOIBs are cleaner.

Let's recap these benefits. It is impossible to insert a ballot into the KOIB, it automatically scans the authenticity of the ballot, counts the votes quickly and without the participation of people, and then automatically prints out the minutes. Independent observers and members of PECs note that, as a rule, the results differ in polling stations with and without KOIBs - where everything is automated, the results of the party in power are usually lower.

And now these machines are abandoned due to the fact that the ballots may be too long and will not fit into the ballot box. Mikhail Popov, head of the Federal Informatization Center under the CEC, answering the question of whether it is possible to technically re-equip KOIBs by adjusting them to changing political realities, answered that “anything can be done”, but the main thing is to solve this issue “from the point of view of expediency” to “benefit the electoral system and society”.

In fact, problems can really arise - but they are solvable, said an expert on KOIBs, with whom Novaya managed to talk. Of course, the size of the ballot greatly affects the voting process. Even 182 lines (or 180 centimeters), which the KOIB allows as much as possible, is impractical and difficult. Firstly, it is inconvenient for the voter, who receives a canvas the size of himself. Secondly, the voting process itself will take more time (if only because it is more difficult to put a sheet 180 centimeters long into the ballot box) - because of this, there may be queues at the polling stations. Another problem is that the larger the ballot, the fewer such ballots will fit in the ballot box: 300-400 pieces. Taking into account the fact that in many polling stations there are over a thousand registered voters, and sometimes elections of several levels are held on the same day, larger ballot boxes will have to be made.

One of the solutions was proposed back in January of this year at a discussion in the Duma Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building. There was an idea in principle to change the ballot and make it in the form of an A5 booklet, consisting of many pages, each of which would tell about the candidate, and at the end there would be a tear-off sheet, where the candidates described earlier would be indicated each under his own number. The Novaya expert considers this option to be the most rational.

computer voting

Complexes for electronic voting (ECGs) are not considered by the CEC as an alternative to KOIBs. Their production is much more expensive: now - about half a million rubles per car. But although the goal of covering all sites with CEGs (or at least using them to the maximum) is not on the agenda, the CEC is working on improving the devices.

However, if KOIBs are considered by supporters of fair elections as an objective benefit, CEGs cause many experts to be wary. For voters, it would seem easy to vote. But new opportunities open up for counterfeiters as well.

CEG is a fully sensory machine. The principle of operation is as follows: the voter receives a card with a barcode, which is activated by a member of the PEC, then approaches the device with a touch screen, applies the card to the red indicator, selects a ballot on the screen (if there are several elections of different levels in the polling station), finds a candidate, confirms choice, then receives a paper version of their choice printed on the built-in printer. After that, he confirms his choice again. If the voter accidentally made a mistake, then, having received a printed piece of paper, he can return everything back and change the candidate. After eight in the evening, the results are taken to the TEC on a flash drive and in a paper version.

This scheme has its pitfalls. Voters, especially pensioners, are not ready for electronic voting, which means they can simply get confused, Grigory Melkonyants, co-chairman of the Council of the GOLOS movement, believes. This means that advisers will be needed who will tell you where to press and where to apply the barcode. And in this situation, it will be difficult for observers to control that the advice concerns only the technical side of the matter, and the secrecy of the vote will also be violated. Secondly, the transition to electronic voting itself is a risk. In elections the old fashioned way, all falsification technologies are already more or less known, and what will happen inside the software is a mystery. At the same time, manually checking the vote count is much more difficult than when using KOIBs. Melkonyants recalls: he was present at the first use of KEGs, still a test one - even then the members of the commission refused to recount the votes manually. Recalculation from printouts is a really difficult procedure: if the voter, having already received a printed copy, decides to change his choice, the printer prints a second copy, with the changed vote. And the members of the commission then have to figure out which of them is true.

direct connection

So far, the CEC is going to modernize the electoral system in a different way - by establishing a direct connection between the polling stations and the GAS "Vybory" system, bypassing intermediaries represented by TECs. It is assumed that after the polling stations are closed and the results are counted, the results will go directly to the Central Election Commission, and not be collected in the territorial commissions.

Grigory Melkonyants believes that the CEC was pushed to this step by observers: in the last elections, on September 8, an alternative SMS-CEC (in Moscow, even the whole "People's Electoral Commission") worked, which received reports on the results from different polling stations from observers and members of commissions, and often appeared faster than the official ones. When the data of observers has already been promptly published on the Internet, it becomes much more difficult to rewrite the protocols. So perhaps this is a way to increase speed - so that authorities can learn faster and correct results faster if necessary.

Maybe, of course, such a goal is not set: the CEC just wants to speed up the process. But now there is a catch behind every electoral initiative of the authorities. How else? KOIBs temporarily became a compromise that suited everyone: the authorities, election commissions, members of commissions, experts, observers, and "angry citizens" constantly dissatisfied with the quality of elections. Now they are also being abandoned, without even having time to fully understand what it is - elections in new automated conditions.

Why then call the CEC program accelerated technical re-equipment? Returning to voting manually, in the old fashioned way, definitely does not fall under this definition.