Press Release, 6.09.2022

Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

On 5 September, the regional branches of the Yabloko party and the candidates nominated by the party to run in the regional and local elections submitted lists of observers to the electoral commissions. The regional branches of Yabloko in Moscow, Pskov and Novgorod also sent their lists of observers for remote electronic voting to the electoral commissions organising remote electronic voting. The lists of observers include IT-specialists.

It should be noted that in April 2022, the Central Electoral Commission issued instructions for monitoring remote electronic voting. Political parties, candidates and public organisations can appoint three observers to the remote electronic voting, the lists of such observers must be formed no later than three days before the elections. Suh observers must get access the observer node (a separate blockchain node) and the lists of those who signed up for the remote electronic voting and voted. Observers will be able to monitor voting statistics in the premises of the electoral commissions: the number of those who registered, took ballots and “dropped” them into an electronic ballot box, as well as blocks of information with encrypted voting results. Statistics on the progress of online voting will also be published on the Internet.

Monitoring experts and electoral lawyers believe that the e-voting system remains opaque to observers. Noting anomalies in the course of the remote electronic votings, the participants in the observation could not figure out the reasons for what was happening and had to trust the explanations of the developers of the electronic remote voting system.