Russia’s electoral body says the country faces similar challenges to Brazil in the election

Fernando Frazao / Agência BrasilThe electronic voting machine records the end of the voting

An international committee followed the voting process last Sunday 2 in an interview with Young Pan Newsand a member of the Central Elections Committee in RussiaPavel Andreev, announced that his country shares with Brazil Common challenges in the selection process for their representatives, such as accusations of electoral fraud and dissemination of false news. Voting in Russia is also direct and secret, but it is not mandatory. Additionally, the legislative elections are separate from the presidential elections, given the size of the country, which is twice the size of Brazilian land. There, voting lasts for 22 consecutive hours, as there are 11 time zones in the country and total votes can take days, as the electoral system is mixed, with electronic, digital and paper ballots. For us, the Electoral Commission of Russia, we see the future of votes in the remote electronic voting system. However, we are careful to offer this, and we continue to consider it an experiment, as we adhere step by step to this new system. Today in the Russian Federation there are 89 regions and so far the maximum number of regions operating with electronic voting machines has been 7”, explained the Russian observer.

According to Andreev, the future lies in electronic voting, but it is necessary to encourage public confidence in the process, and he said that the paper version should not leave the scene any time soon in Russia: “This is what we do in Russia. It involves the participation of the population, the involvement of observers and our, in addition To the parties and candidates, representatives of civil society, the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, a group of non-governmental organizations of Russia.We also appoint observers and representatives of all political parties who accompany the physical ballot boxes and the electronic voting system.We also encrypt the system, give part of the keys For political parties and civil society representatives, so they can make sure they participate and don’t challenge the result in the end. But we are not in a hurry, anyone who wants to vote with ballot papers can continue. In Russia, we are not yet at the point of exchanging all paper votes for digital votes.”

The international authorities attended a series of lectures, and on the day of the first round they visited polling stations, and saw the safety test of electronic voting machines and continued until the end of voting, with the ballot boxes being printed and votes counted and counted. headquarters Supreme Electoral Court (Tokyo Stock Exchange). Foreign missions indicated in initial reports that the elections took place in a normal and transparent manner and confirmed the security of the polling stations. In addition to observers of international missions such as Organization of American States (OAS), the Union of American Electoral Bodies (Uniore) and the Network of Electoral Administration Judicial Bodies of the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries, which came to accompany the elections in Brazil, the country also received official guests from Costa. Rica, Colombia, Uruguay, Portugal, France, Spain and Russia.

* With information from reporter Katusya Sotomayor