Up until midday on Monday, many Russians took advantage of the so-called electronic voting as a chance to win or a source of curiosities.

The capital Moscow was one of a total of seven regions in Russia and in the Ukrainian Crimea where voters could take part in elections to the Duma, the lower house, online from Friday to Sunday.

Lotteries were held to get Muscovites to register for e-voting.

Of all people, Dmitrij Peskow, the spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, was identified as the winner of the equivalent of 117 euros, which he could spend in supermarkets or a fast-food restaurant.

Friedrich Schmidt

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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A video circulated by the Kremlin, which is supposed to show how Putin, an internet skeptic (“CIA project”), votes online, allegedly last Friday, caused amusement.

Peskow had to explain how Putin, who avowedly does not have a mobile phone, received the SMS code he needed to vote: The president had used an assistant's device.

It was also noticeable that Putin's wristwatch in the e-voting video displayed the date of September 10th, so the recording was probably a pre-made “can”.

Corrective in the sense of the Kremlin

But actually it was always clear that electronic voting was an important tool in the toolkit of those in power for the elections. Despite the exclusion of dozens of unpleasant candidates under various pretexts, and despite ongoing support from the state and its media for the candidates of the power party United Russia, there were a number of applicants with the best prospects of becoming uncomfortable Duma deputies. So in Moscow. But it is precisely there that e-voting has already proven itself as a corrective in the sense of the Kremlin: In elections for the city council in 2019, alleged online results brought opposition candidate Roman Juneman, who was in front after counting the votes in the polling stations, for the victory in his Constituency.

The independent election observers from Golos (vote) explained the dangers of e-voting in such a way that someone other than the authorized person casts the vote, that someone supervises the voting and exerts pressure that the vote is simply not counted correctly. Juneman - who has now been banned from running for the Duma - described e-voting as a new form of “administrative resource” for those in power. According to official figures, the number of voters who would have registered to vote online was more than two million in Moscow alone - a huge number. Officially, more than 96 percent of them should have participated in the election.

Only more than twelve hours after the polling stations had closed were the alleged results of the e-voting in the capital suddenly taken into account in the count, and even after that even experienced observers puzzled for longer whether and how these results had been published. With reference to the online election, a number of Moscow opposition candidates were deprived of the victory that had been certain until then. The success of the Communist candidate Anastassija Udaltsova in her constituency had even been reported, citing data from the Central Election Commission (ZIK): Udalzova was clearly ahead of her United Russia opponent "after processing 100 percent of the protocols". Then the tide turned.