Bots with a vote

Member of the election commission of remote electronic voting Nikolai Kolosov - about the "Potemkin village" for observers

- Nikolai, please tell me who you are and what did you do on the days of voting?

-I am a web developer, I enter the governing body of the public organization “Society. The Black”, worked at the headquarters of Yuneman, then in the team of Danila Makhnitsky in the Novomoskovsk district. It was we who launched projects to protect the elections nabludenie2021.ru and vashvybor.org .

From Danil, I received a referral to the commission. Initially, he was going to go to observe “in the field”, somewhere to the joint of New Moscow and the Kaluga region in order to prevent falsify the elections. But the headquarters sent me to the PEC Dag to monitor the vote in the Novomoskovsk district. Since the powers of all 15 PECs were assigned to the same commission at once, we became observers of elections to the State Duma throughout Moscow.

- How did you start your work?

- I missed the possibility of calling the registered electronic voting. He considered that this was uninformative, since any sample that I can call will be unrequited and there will be nothing to compare with - there is no control group. On September 17, I arrived at the center for observing the Moscow DEG.

- Where did this happen?

- On the Krasnopresnenskaya embankment, in the ex -center.

- What did it look like?

- The public observation center for DEG was a huge demonstration hall where 200-300 people could be accommodated. There was a large screen with the total numbers: the number of issued ballots, the number of ballots accepted, voters were registered in total. And there were about 30 smaller screens. On these screens there were data on the issued ballots accepted by ballots and a turnout in circles.

Along the walls stood boxes for printouts of electronic voices, where the "ballots" fell from the printers.

- Just the number of voters? And Heshi ( encrypted messages about the actions of the voter in the system - receipt of ballots, their acceptance. - Ed.), Date and time of transaction?

- No. Only the total data with Observer.mos.ru, that is, anyone could watch it without leaving home.

- Stop. That is, what turns out: there are 30 monitors in the "Public Office", and on them - publicly available information from the network is broadcast?

- Yes. Moreover, the information is completely incorrect. At some point, one of the indicators of progress hovered, and the conversion, that is, the attitude of the adopted ballots to the issued, began to reach 200-300%.

- Are Churov surpassed?

- Yes.

This made a grotesque impression: foreigners come in, nod, rejoice, and the numbers on the screen do not beat. However, I myself only realized that something was wrong here.

- What did the members of the election commission answer you?

- In the spirit of "well, it's nothing." Then they began to run, fuss, but could not fix it.

- And for a long time this disgrace hung?

- The good part of September 17.

- Why was the whole garden with a center of observation and the withdrawal of the contents of the browser to the monitors when all the information was available from any computer?

- It looked like a Potemkin village.

- What did you do?

- Behind the demonstration hall there were three less rooms, the size of about a small school class. A separate room for each election: State Duma, MGD, municipal elections in Schukino. Monitors also hung on the walls. It was there that I first saw a jamb with a dependent indicator and 201%. I asked the person who found in the room where my weekend (GD) is located, who seemed to me an employee of Dit. I was told that this, they say, is a mistake on a Dashboard (that is, on the monitors posted in the demonstration hall).

The fact that the mistake in Observer.mos.ru I realized when I saw that a similar mistake was observed in a large demonstration hall. One of the notbooks looked from which the picture was broadcast. Ba! So this is a browser with an official election website.

- And what about the "Noda observers", about which we wrote in the "New" ? Did you manage to see it?

- Between 11 and 12 days I asked [the chairman of Yuri Pavlov or his deputy] about the opportunity to watch the Noda. They answered me with a refusal: "No, no, no, wait for a specialist." Such a specialist was found. Next to the room, which has the status of the WIC Premises, was different, we entered there. There were several laptops and monitors in it. They sat down, they turned on the "Noda observers."

- And what did you see?

- I saw a browser in which the integrated voting parameters were displayed: a turnout, the number of issued and adopted ballots, the number of voters in the given moment in the polling station. The data was in all elections and in all areas.

-Heshi, encrypted messages with the choice of voter, date-time transactions?

- No, this was not displayed on the screen.

- Data went in stream, continuously?

- No.

It was necessary to copy a line (relatively speaking, the key) to the browser from the text file nearby) and press the button to overload the page. After 1-2 seconds, relevant information was displayed.

- That is, to see each ballot as in a normal area - how was it betrayed, how they lowered it into the urn - was not a speech?

- No. Only with manual update.

- Did these data coincide with monitors in the Great Hall?

- No. They looked much more reasonable and more appropriate reality.

After that, I began to perceive Observer.mos.ru as a compromised source of information.

Yes, and Kostyko ( head of the Developer Group DEG . - Ed. ) At the training of Melkonian ( the Voice of the Voice -recognized “Ino -agent” . - Ed. ) Did not deny that the data on observer.mos.ru went through an uncontrolled laying. Therefore, we need a "node".

At first they tried to ban the data from the Noda to photograph, so for the first time I rewrote the information about the turnout in my district on a leaflet. Then he achieved to be photographed.

- Who tried to ban?

- DIT employee ( Department of Information Technology of the Moscow City Hall. - Ed. ), Who was sitting nearby.

- How did he motivate the ban?

- He referred to a certain boss. As a result, Evgeny Davydov, a member of the commission, which was related to DIT, gave the appearance of the turnout.

- Who could see the Noda besides you?

- Ilya Sukhorukov from Bryukhanova, Anna Lobok from the Communist Party. We only tried to figure out what was happening. There was another timid observer with the right of an advisory voice from Yabloko, he was not very active in obtaining information.

- And the “node” was turned on only for you when you entered there on Friday about noon on Friday?

-Yes, I did not see someone to watch her before me.

- And the rest of the members of the commission, that, were not interested in the "node"?

“I would call them bots, let them not be offended by me.” They did nothing exactly. They received complaints from citizens who wanted to vote on DEG, but could not. And the members of the commission, instead of understanding the merits, simply sent complaints to the child, and the citizens were sent to the unsubscription. To me, when I tried to deal with all these issues, they said: "Why are you raising a riot here?" The Chairman of the PEC Pavlov behaved quite aggressively.

- What was this expressed?

- We noticed loosely closed boxes for paper prints of votes in the demonstration hall. I called the headquarters and told my colleagues this as Fun Fact ( funny fact. - Ed. ). Pavlov heard this out of the ear and began to pronounce it to me-they say, why are you saying this to someone, could not tell us quietly-the negativity came from him.

Other members of the commission, with any attempt to do something, began the same record-"Why are you interfering, we are sitting calmly." Although in reality they did nothing there, they just sat. One girl made the impression of a parrot or an Internet in the literal sense of the word-she repeated the phrase "who does not believe in electronic elections-on the foil cap at least five times.

The “bots” agreed that Dit was doing everything for them.

- The described above occurred between the 11th and 12th hours of the day. What happened next?

- Then I copied the turnout from the screen. At about 15 o’clock, Anna Lobok with us drew up an act that Observer.mos.ru does not work. About 18 hours, Observer.mos.ru earned normally. Of all the observers, I consider Anna the most bold and competent. Especially with regard to interaction with the "bots" in the election commission. When at 15.00 Anna demanded data on the turnout, she was refused to issue data certified by the signature. More precisely, they arranged a red tape, they did not want to do anything. However, she achieved this certificate, even if only in the form of a printout with the incomprehensible from the numbers came from. Then at 18 o’clock it drew up an act of data issuing in such a strange format.

- What happened after 20.00 on Sunday?

- Everyone gathered in the hall, there was a ceremony of "assembling the decryption key." I returned to the weekend. Kozhko came, said that, they say, friends, all-all-all, now we will put a decoding and after 1 hour 20-1 hour 40 minutes everything will be deciphered. Everyone dispersed. When they returned after a snack, they wanted to look at the "Noda observers." The chairman of the PEC Pavlov began to answer something for us. Meanwhile, all the Ditovites who could watch this laptop with the Noda disappeared. Pavlov was indignant. “They are busy with the matter” (in fact - they were loafing), and you, they say, are bothering here. I went to Venediktov to ask him what kind of story with the impossibility of access to the Node? Venediktov did not understand me, and then said: "Here is my assistant, deal with her."

She asked me: "And what?" And she ran away somewhere. Then a second girl - an employee of the public surveillance center, came out of the office, assured us that everything was fine, and said to wait.

At the entrance to the demonstration hall, I noticed Davydov. He began to impose him. Give the "Noda". “And it is flooded at the request of safety” ( that is, access is closed by password. - Ed. ), He said, and said that it takes a lot of time to unlock it.

We began to wait.

The second girl and Ditovets came up, together with them we opened and turned on the Node. Set the request: "Show the results in single -mandate districts." There was a message Failed to Fetch, meaning that the data from the database cannot be obtained.

The girl and dietary are sitting, shaking their heads, do not understand what is happening. They started fussing. Members of the commission came running to us. Then a man came running with the surname of Borodenkov on Baiga. Subsequently, in an interview, Kostyko will call him "a regular technical specialist, on duty." This is not true. Borodenkov has in the history of the Moscow DEG status "Project Manager". And Borodenkov said: "This is a security requirement, the certificate has ended."

We asked: "What kind of security requirement?" Borodenkov replied that the FSB officers “obliged them” to include a certificate so that no one could see anything after 20.00.

Davydov claimed the same, but did not mention the abbreviation. Sukhorukov was indignant: “What kind of garbage? The FSB does not organize the elections. " It was evident that Borodenkov was very nervous. In general, I even had a hypothesis that there was some kind of puncture on his part, which he decided to cover with Feesbashniki.

Sukhorukov asked Ditovites to contact the FSB and give access to the Node, Borodenkov agreed that “they would have to encourage them, they were serious guys”, it was about midnight or at the first hour of the morning.

Professing all the deadlines voiced by Artem Kostyko, the headquarters of observation gathered. Venediktov raised the question for the discussion: whether to voice the result without taking into account the partition (which was not calculated at that time). The hall somehow did not support him very vigorously. Then Venediktov nevertheless decided to voice the results without septum. And voiced them.

- And the members of the commission managed to see them at that time?

“No, they didn’t have time, because they couldn’t, because the“ Noda ”did not work, since“ Feesbashnikov did not wake up. ”

Venediktov knew the results of the vote earlier than members of the commission. In fact, it was publicly recognized that members of the election commission could not see the final decoded results of the candidates.

Again. The members of the commission did not see the final results and could not see because of the non-working “node”.

I was at a loss - I see pure madness, but there is no one of the journalists nearby to tell it.

- What happened next?

- Everyone continued to hang out. Borodenkov appeared again. We (I, Denis Shenderovich, Sukhorukov) began to again demand access to Node. Davydov walked nearby. Borodenkov blurted out again about the FSB that everyone was sleeping, could not get through, but soon access to the "node" will be restored. As a result, of course, they did not restore.

And then everyone disappeared. Sukhorukov said that he saw how Ditovites were leaving the public center at 5 in the morning.

Venediktov will subsequently declare that at 4 in the morning protocols were signed by the election commission. This is wrong. The protocol brought Pavlov at 7 in the morning. Where did he get him was incomprehensible.

In addition to the approval of the protocol, during a meeting of the election commission he proposed to discuss the salary of the weekends, of which many were loafing.

I had a feeling that the ugliness of what was happening is not at all interested in at all - neither reporters nor the leaders of the parties, and I went to sleep.

From the editorial office
Artem Kostyko promised to answer the questions of Andrei Zazakin in the last Wednesday. Since this did not happen, we once again send an official request . We will publish answers as soon as they go to the editor.