Remote electronic voting (REV) has been gradually introduced in Russia since 2019. Over this time, independent observers have discovered a host of “holes” in both REV systems operating in Russia (the capital’s system, managed by the Moscow Department of Information Technology, and the federal system, controlled by Rostelecom). Moreover, year after year these systems are getting worse: opportunities for public oversight are shrinking, while opportunities for falsification, on the contrary, are growing.
Let us look at what Russia’s parliamentary parties — those most directly affected by REV — think of these systems.
United Russia on REV
The party of power’s attitude to REV is unlikely to surprise you, since it is its main promoter and beneficiary.
The official website of United Russia’s Moscow branch has an article about REV that talks about how wonderful this method of voting is. It lists the advantages of REV: it is secure, convenient, easy and fast.
Here is what it says about the security of voting via the internet:
“Several levels of security are used to protect REV: data encryption, key separation (one key decrypts, the other anonymises), blockchain technology and public observation. <…> The secrecy of the vote is preserved because, after encryption, the ballot is separated from the voter’s data,” — from the point of view of independent experts, each of these points is, to one degree or another, untrue.
Here is the only sentence in the article that can be called critical, with a very big stretch:
“Theoretical risks cannot be ruled out entirely, but in practice modern REV systems undergo independent audit and testing.”
At the same time, Grigory Melkonyants, who served as the head of the Expert Group for the Public Audit of REV, stated back in 2022 that this group had suspended its work because it never received the information necessary for analysis from the systems’ developers — neither the Moscow one nor the Rostelecom one. That is, the independent audit never actually took place.
In August 2023, Moscow’s Basmanny Court placed Grigory Melkonyants in custody; he was accused of organising the activities of an “undesirable organisation” — the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO) — although no evidence of this was ever presented. Grigory himself did not admit guilt, pointing to the absence of the event of a crime. In the opinion of Melkonyants’s friends and colleagues, the true reason for the expert’s persecution lies in his public activities. In 2024, Amnesty International recognised him as a prisoner of conscience. On 14 May 2025, Grigory Melkonyants was sentenced to 5 years in a general-regime penal colony.
United Russia’s positive attitude to REV is also reflected in their voting in the State Duma: during the consideration of all seven laws devoted to REV that have been adopted by Russia’s parliament, not a single United Russia deputy ever voted against and not once abstained — there were only votes “for” and those not voting. (Full voting statistics are provided at the end of the article).
The LDPR on REV
The followers of the late Zhirinovsky are, on the whole, rather positive about voting via the internet. The reasons for this are honestly reported by the deputy head of the LDPR faction in 2024, Sergei Leonov:
“We have already participated in elections using REV in Vladimir Oblast and, most interestingly, it was precisely those who used REV who voted more actively for the LDPR than those who did not. And the LDPR’s percentage in remote electronic voting was higher than at polling stations where, accordingly, people voted ‘with their feet’.”
However, unlike United Russia, the LDPR representative allows himself to express “wariness” about electronic voting, although he does not rush to elaborate on what exactly it consists of:
“We, of course, regard REV with wariness, but on the whole we believe it is the future. And in any case our whole country will gradually switch to REV, because, on the one hand, it is more convenient, and, on the other, it will additionally attract our young people to the elections.”
In 2023, when announcing the recruitment of observers for the Moscow mayoral election, the LDPR also spoke ambivalently. On the one hand: “The main talking points one hears about REV are the padding of votes by the party of power and the impossibility of monitoring the election process online,” — seemingly criticism.
On the other hand: “The LDPR has always supported REV and our main task in these elections is to prepare trained professionals capable of monitoring elections both at polling stations and online via Remote Electronic Voting.”
On the whole, the LDPR lives up to its reputation as professionals at “sitting on the fence”: it unfailingly supports all initiatives coming from the authorities, while at the same time pretending to be an irreconcilable opposition.
The same wishy-washy attitude of the LDPR is also evident in their voting on laws devoted to REV. During the consideration of five laws on voting via the internet, the deputies of this party voted almost unanimously “for”.
But when the law of 23 May 2020 No. 152-FZ on continuing the REV experiment in Moscow was being adopted, for some reason they abstained from voting en masse (out of the entire faction, 1 was against, 38 did not vote).
And during the consideration of the law of 23 May 2020 No. 154-FZ, which allowed electronic voting in all regions of Russia, 27 LDPR members voted against, 12 did not vote (with no “for” votes and no abstentions). Admittedly, this same law introduced many other electoral innovations, such as tightening the rules on signature collection (which, however, barely affected the LDPR, since as a parliamentary party they are exempt from the need to collect signatures).
A Just Russia on REV
The attitude of A Just Russia members to REV has changed over time, from support to strict criticism. However, they have never opposed internet voting as such: there is no escaping it, it is the future; but REV needs to be organised in a completely different way, and as long as this different way is nowhere in sight — let us better vote the old-fashioned way.
For the first law, of 29 May 2019 No. 103-FZ on conducting the first REV experiment in Moscow, 18 deputies voted “for”, and another 5 did not vote.
The next law that mentioned REV was No. 1-FKZ of 14 March 2020 on the constitutional amendment that secured Putin’s “zeroing out”. So here the mention of REV hardly played a significant role. One way or another, 20 A Just Russia members voted “for”, 2 did not vote.
And then the fronde begins. The third law in order, No. 152-FZ of 23 May 2020 on continuing the REV experiment in Moscow — among A Just Russia members, not a single “for”, 2 against, 1 abstained, 19 did not vote.
The leader of A Just Russia, Sergei Mironov, stated in 2022: “Yes, we must keep up with the times, and it would seem that in the 21st century electronic voting should become the norm. But today, unfortunately, there is no guarantee that the expression of citizens’ will through electronic voting will be interpreted exactly as the citizens want. Something tells me that many regions will happily switch to remote voting. But we consider it premature to give them such powers.”
The next three laws mentioning REV — A Just Russia members are overwhelmingly against them. And in the most recent one to date, No. 115-FZ of 23 May 2025 — with a single “for”, 22 abstained and 5 did not vote.
“We understand that digital technology is not the distant future, it is already today’s reality. But we do not yet understand how this remote voting process can be monitored. Everyone knows that you can press ‘plus’ on the keyboard and ‘minus’ will appear on the monitor; to do that you just need to write the appropriate programme, — comments State Duma deputy Andrei Kuznetsov on the position of A Just Russia members in 2023. — If one has to choose between electronic and traditional voting, then ordinary voting is better. But if the question is to vote electronically or not vote at all, then it is better to cast your vote remotely.”
New People on REV
The newly created party New People, which in the latest convocation of the State Duma played the role of either liberals or technocrats, in fact fully supported REV, although it tried to pretend that it was trying to improve it: to make it more transparent and less susceptible to falsification.
During the consideration of law No. 60-FZ of 14 March 2022, New People deputy Anton Tkachev even recorded a video that was intended to explain their position on REV. Tkachev expressed the opinion that Russian young people are generally unwilling to vote in any way other than via the internet: “It’s not just that they don’t make it to the polling station, they don’t go to the shop, today they order even food via their smartphone.”
The official position of New People states: “Resisting progress is foolish. Whatever you say, universal internetisation and digitalisation are inevitable. <…> The more quickly we introduce technical innovations, the better. <…> Many still have questions about the system after last year’s elections. But what is more correct: to reject innovations or to configure the system so as to make it convenient and transparent? We are for the second option, which is why we are preparing our proposals and amendments.”
New People also invited experts and critics of REV to get involved in work on the draft law in order to “close all contentious issues”.
A great many amendments were submitted to this draft law, more than 70. Of these, 36 were submitted by New People! One technical amendment was adopted by the State Duma, 35 were rejected. Thus, the technocratic improvements from New People did not interest the majority of parliamentarians.
But that did not prevent the faction, in the final vote at the second reading, from again voting for the draft law (13 “for”, 2 did not vote)! And at the concluding third reading — even 14 “for” with one not voting!
That is, the party formally tried to introduce changes to the opaque and flawed REV procedure, suffered an expected defeat in this, but — apparently so as “not to break away from the collective” — nonetheless supported the law that enshrined everything they had intended to fight against when they invited experts and critics to “cooperate”.
The most recent REV law to date, No. 115-FZ of 23 May 2025, was also supported by New People (13 for, 2 did not vote).
The CPRF on REV
The CPRF’s position looks the most consistent — the communists have been categorically opposed to REV from the very beginning. They mainly voted “against” in relation to 6 of the 7 laws devoted to REV. The only exception was the law on Putin’s “zeroing out” through the constitutional amendment No. 1-FKZ of 14 March 2020 — here all 43 deputies abstained.
In the opinion of CPRF chairman Gennady Zyuganov, electronic voting is “unreliable, costs more than preparing paper ballots, and also allows one to ‘falsify’ the results.” Admittedly, for some reason he was concerned here not with the accuracy of citizens’ expression of will, but with the fact that “this is a direct path to rebellion and disorder.”
And the secretary of the CPRF Central Committee for elections, Sergei Obukhov, believes that REV is a direct path to undermining traditional foundations: “We are for traditionality in this intimate matter of a citizen appointing their representatives to power. If you are for traditional values, [use] traditional paper ballots too.”
For the latest of the laws devoted to REV, No. 115-FZ of 23 May 2025, the communists prepared a multi-page review in which they systematically dissect all the shortcomings of voting via the internet.
In their opinion, the draft law “lays the foundation for the further introduction into the electoral process of devices and systems for counting votes that are opaque and inaccessible for verification by voters, observers, candidates and members of election commissions, which gives grounds for society to doubt the legitimacy of elected bodies of state power and for establishing the non-compliance of electronic voting procedures with the principles of electoral law.”
In particular, the communists oppose:
the use of electronic voting complexes (EVCs), which they call “vulnerable” and “unverifiable”;
the mixing of votes obtained through REV and on paper ballots, after which it will be impossible to identify anomalies in the electronic voting;
the use of computers and smartphones that are not produced in Russia, as the authors of this document fear interference in elections from abroad.
At the same time, the CPRF believes that the REV law should include requirements to:
record in the voting protocol exactly which software and hardware were used during voting;
prohibit the use of overly complex technologies that only a handful of specialists understand, and which are therefore impossible to observe;
prohibit connecting the REV system to the internet, so that “malefactors and hackers” cannot “directly interfere in Russia’s electoral system”;
conduct selective control recounts of votes at some polling stations;
prohibit voting over several days.
The communists also insist on removing the article on REV from the election law altogether, because it is susceptible to falsification — which has been revealed during numerous court proceedings.
Laws on REV and the voting results of the parliamentary parties
Federal Law of 29 May 2019 No. 103-FZ “On conducting an experiment in the organisation and implementation of remote electronic voting in the elections of deputies to the Moscow City Duma of the seventh convocation.”
Law of the Russian Federation on the amendment to the Constitution of the Russian Federation of 14 March 2020 No. 1-FKZ “On improving the regulation of certain issues of the organisation and functioning of public authority.”
Federal Law of 23 May 2020 No. 152-FZ “On conducting an experiment in the organisation and implementation of remote electronic voting in the federal city of Moscow.”
Federal Law of 23 May 2020 No. 154-FZ “On amendments to certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation.”
Federal Law of 5 April 2021 No. 89-FZ “On amendments to certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation.”
Federal Law of 14 March 2022 No. 60-FZ “On amendments to certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation.”
Federal Law of 23 May 2025 No. 115-FZ “On amendments to certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation.”