Keeping up with the times

Electronic elections are good, I drown for them, I love them. I am generally for widespread digitalization. It is foolish to do the opposite when the whole world is alright, but we ourselves are constantly surfing the Internet and using digital goods.

My seventy-year-old grandmother, who lives in Volgograd (well, let's admit: not the center of the modern world), uses Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, we call each other through video calls, and she watches her great-granddaughter grow up. And in passing, he consults his same aged grandmothers-neighbors about applications on a smartphone and helps them configure updates on a computer. She recently asked what Telegram is and whether she needs it. It is clear that she does this not only out of interest - it is important for her to keep up with the times in order to keep up with us, my generation, and have access and the ability to reduce distances through technology. In general, a good half of my relatives might not know how I am doing, but social networks and technological innovations help us keep in touch and not get lost.

In Russia, in the elections for amendments to the Constitution, 1 million people chose the electronic voting method, and this is only for Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod. And there would be the same technologies in other regions, the numbers, of course, would be much, much larger. Here, of course, a pandemic played its role: it was safer to vote without leaving home. Well, or, for example, as for me, it’s easier to vote online than to go to your own site, which is far away. And if a person is a visitor, it is all the more easier not to detach at an offline polling station, but to vote through Internet technologies. In this case, you do not need to do anything unusual or super unusual: for the most part, we have already transferred our whole life online. And if, among other things, scrolling, web surfing, online shopping, we have to spend ten minutes to register, and then to vote online, we will not even notice. Elections should become more convenient and simpler, the authorities should and can go forward and come up with as simple voting methods as possible.

We have Estonian experience - there elections have been held electronically since 2005. It is interesting that there in the first online elections of representatives of local authorities only a little more than 9 thousand voters voted. In the second, national elections, 30 thousand people chose the electronic method. And every year this figure only grew.

In 2021, we are waiting for the next election - already deputies to the State Duma. So far, there have been no official statements, but for some reason I am sure that the successful result of online voting will confirm my guesses that it will be possible to vote again online. Already today, this possibility is admitted in the CEC and in the State Duma itself.

Statistics from Estonian colleagues show that electronic elections (which is a complete surprise for many) do not have any specific target audience.

Well, for example, the core of voters who favor online are innovators, people who like everything new and technologically advanced, young people, for example, or millennials. And now they vote online in the first place. And the second wave of voters, who joins similar elections a little later, are 35+ middle-income men who rummage in technology and so on. 

It was expected that over time this trend will not change and online elections will be relevant only for these two groups, but the hypothesis was shattered when already in the third or fourth elections the audience indicators were blurred, that is, an equal number of people participated in electronic voting all ages, of any affluence and level of education and technological knowledge. That is, electronic elections, like the Internet itself, are a litmus test for determining the audience of the Internet as a whole, and it is absolutely neutral by gender, racial, national, sexual, and whatever you like. Electronic elections are perfect for everyone.

In addition, they perfectly affect the turnout, because it is cosmically convenient. Now we can influence the electoral processes even easier and without even leaving home. If earlier, in order to vote, it was necessary to go to the polling station, spend time and effort, but now everything will be easier. And here and now (in parallel with the bulletin open in the next browser window) you can read the information about the candidates, google the name of everyone who is elected, and no one will rush you.

You need to understand that the level of trust that has been shown to the authorities and the electoral system indicates the right course of action. The State Duma did a great job in terms of preparing amendments and providing a legislative framework for measures to support citizens. After the adoption of the amendments, the State Duma becomes stronger: now it is the deputies who will make decisions on the approval of candidates for the post of prime minister, his deputies and federal ministers.

The opposition at that time was not engaged in specific affairs, but in yet another hype. The very fact that in their campaign against amendments they seized on only one thesis - the so-called zeroing of deadlines, suggests that they do not want to dive into the problems, they choose simple paths. And unsuccessfully.

And the way (including electronically) the Russian people will vote in the next election in 2021 will show who is political impotent and who is great.

The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.