On Thursday, June 4, a meeting of the Central Election Commission of Russia was held, one of the topics of which was the procedure for remote electronic voting during the nationwide vote on the approval of amendments to the Constitution of Russia.

According to its results, it was decided that this format will be used in Moscow and the Nizhny Novgorod region. The preliminary list also included St. Petersburg, the Republic of Karelia and the Krasnoyarsk Territory. At the same time, the CEC developed a number of criteria for determining the readiness of subjects to conduct remote electronic voting. Among them, in particular, the number of voters in the regions with entries on the State Service portal, the willingness of local authorities to provide an information campaign.

For each of the regions 13 members of the commission voted separately. Subjects needed to collect more than half of the votes. Before these, representatives of each of the regions made a report.

As noted by the chairman of the Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, St. Petersburg was unable to collect the number of votes because of doubts about the quality and ability of the election commission "to organize the process so that there is trust and public consensus." Regarding the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the problems are related to the difference in time zones, and Karelia has technical nuances.

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At the same time, it was proposed that St. Petersburg, the Krasnoyarsk Territory and Karelia become the basis for the implementation of pilot projects on remote electronic voting.

“It is very important for us to go beyond Moscow. I want to thank the regions that have applied. It is clear that the capacity of the portal does not allow for all regions. Based on the results of the rating vote, the CEC decides that remote electronic voting will take place in Moscow and the Nizhny Novgorod region, ”Interfax quotes Pamfilova.

The head of the CEC also indicated that electronic voting on amendments to the country's main law would last six days in order to double-check all the facts and prevent double voting.

“So that those voters who signed up and would like to vote remotely, but for some reason changed their minds so that they had the opportunity to come to their polls on July 1. And to be given such an opportunity, our colleagues must have an understanding that they came to vote for the first time, ”she said.

Pamfilova also said that applications for participation in the remote voting, which will be organized on the portal 2020og.ru, can be submitted on the portal of public services and the site mos.ru.

At the same time, Minister of Communications Maksut Shadaev emphasized that the agency is ready to launch an electronic application form.

“From June 5, this form will be available to all our users on the government services portal, and any of them who have a verified account and who are matched with the voter register will be able to submit such a statement from tomorrow until June 21,” the head of the Ministry of Communications said.

From this date, an electronic voting entry will also be available on amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation in Moscow. At the same time, they plan to conduct a test electronic vote in the capital in the week of June 15-21. This was stated by the head of the department for the improvement of territorial management and the development of smart projects of the metropolitan government Artyom Kostyrko.

"And we offer to give an opportunity to everyone who has accounts on the federal government services portal, on the Moscow services portal, to take part, see how it looks from the inside, and then decide whether it will be interesting for them to participate in electronic voting or not," he remarked.

Recall that on June 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree that a nationwide vote on amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation will be held on Wednesday, July 1. Later, the spokesman for the head of state, Dmitry Peskov, said that this day would be declared a day off.

During the vote, Russian citizens will have to answer the only question: “Do you approve changes to the Constitution of the Russian Federation?” In the case of adoption of amendments to the Basic Law of the country will make a number of changes. Among them is the compulsory indexation of pensions, benefits and other social benefits, the status of the Russian language as the language of a state-forming people, a member of the multinational union of equal peoples of Russia, is being consolidated, children are declared the most important state policy priority. In addition, the current president is given the opportunity to participate as a candidate in the presidential election, which will take place after the adoption of amendments to the basic law of Russia.