Remote electronic voting (REV) is voting via the internet. Most experts believe that REV in its Russian variant makes election fraud significantly easier, and that such fraud is extremely difficult to detect. REV was introduced gradually, starting in 2019, and became increasingly significant from one election to the next. The authorities tested the system, progressively making it impervious to independent observation, and expanded the geography of its use, so that in the coming years internet voting may completely displace ordinary paper ballots.
Interestingly, Russia effectively has two REV systems at once. The first to appear was the capital’s system, linked to the Moscow Department of Information Technology (DIT) and the mos.ru portal. The second is the nationwide federal platform, linked to “Gosuslugi” and Rostelecom.
2019: the Moscow experiment
The first special federal law on REV was adopted on 29 May 2019. This was Federal Law No. 103-FZ “On conducting an experiment in organising and carrying out remote electronic voting at the elections of deputies to the Moscow City Duma of the seventh convocation.” It permitted REV to be used in several single-mandate constituencies at the Moscow City Duma elections. The law defined REV as voting without a paper ballot using special software of the Moscow government services portal. Voting on the law in the State Duma:
In parallel, a Moscow law was adopted — Moscow City Law No. 18 of 22 May 2019, which specified the conduct of the experiment at the city level.
At the 2019 Moscow City Duma elections, REV was used in 3 of the 45 constituencies. Around 9,800 people out of the 109,000 who voted in those constituencies used it — roughly 9%. Even then, the first serious questions about the reliability of REV results arose, because the electronic results sometimes differed markedly from the paper ones. For example, in one constituency, Roman Yuneman was leading after the ordinary ballots were counted, but after the electronic votes were tallied, Margarita Rusetskaya won, and the margin between the candidates was just 84 votes.
2020: REV moves beyond the experiment
In 2020, REV was already used in a campaign of federal significance — the vote on the constitutional amendments. The Law of the Russian Federation on the Amendment to the Constitution of 14 March 2020 No. 1-FKZ provided for the possibility of using remote electronic voting in the nationwide vote.
On 23 May 2020, two more laws were adopted. Federal Law No. 152-FZ extended the Moscow experiment and permitted the use of REV in Moscow at the 2020–2021 elections.
Federal Law No. 154-FZ amended electoral legislation and allowed REV as a more general form of voting — it permitted the use of remote electronic voting at elections of various levels, if the relevant election commission so decides according to rules established by the CEC.
In June, the Moscow City Duma routinely adopted Law No. 10 on extending the practice of remote electronic voting.
At the vote on the constitutional amendments, REV was used in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. In Moscow, the electronic result was lower than the paper result: around 62% voted for the amendments via REV, compared with around 67% at polling stations. In Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, the gap was even wider: around 60% “for” via REV, compared with 81% at polling stations. But the campaign itself was accompanied by scandals surrounding electronic voter lists and voter registration: there were reports of suspicious accounts created using the passport data of elderly people, and of a leak of the REV voter database.
2021: REV changes the political outcome
In 2021, another step was taken towards the widespread introduction of REV. Federal Law No. 89-FZ of 5 April 2021 provided for the possibility of creating a special territorial election commission to conduct internet voting.
In Moscow, a legislative package was adopted that, among other things, extended the REV experiment to all voting on the 2021 single voting day.
At the 2021 State Duma elections, the federal REV system managed by Rostelecom was used for the first time in six regions. Moscow, meanwhile, retained its own platform. In the capital, electronic voting became mass-scale: around 1.9 million people took part, roughly half of all Moscow voters. 2021 was in many ways a turning point for REV. In Moscow, it was the electronic votes that changed the results in 8 of the 15 single-mandate constituencies: according to the paper ballots, opposition or independent candidates were winning there, but after the REV count, victory went to candidates from the pro-government pool.
Independent observers suggested that REV was used as a system for fine-tuning fraud: exactly as many votes were injected through it as were needed for a particular candidate to win. The electronic voting results were published only in the morning, the day after the election, even though electronic counting should in theory be instantaneous — this further intensified suspicions about the dishonesty of REV. A key feature of Moscow’s REV in 2021 was the “re-voting” mechanism. It was supposedly intended to give a voter the opportunity to change their vote if, for example, they had voted under pressure. However, time-series analysis revealed anomalies: on the last day of voting, from two o’clock in the morning until four o’clock in the afternoon, the share of “re-votes” for United Russia rose sharply; similar spikes were observed in single-mandate constituencies.
Separately, a synchronous “dip” in voting for administrative candidates was noted from 12:20 to 13:00 — observers suggested that the electronic fraudsters had gone to lunch at that time.
The significance of 2021 lies in the fact that REV became, for the first time, a visible mechanism of real influence on the distribution of mandates. Before that, one could speak of glitches, risks and opacity. After the 2021 State Duma elections, REV came to be perceived as a technology capable of changing the result in key constituencies, and always in the interests of pro-government candidates.
2022: REV becomes a permanent norm
After the scandals of 2021, REV was not only not suspended for an independent audit — on the contrary, it was entrenched in the basic legislation. On 14 March 2022, Federal Law No. 60-FZ was adopted. It amended several other federal laws at once, including 67-FZ “On the basic guarantees of electoral rights and the right to participate in a referendum of citizens of the Russian Federation,” where it introduced a special article on remote electronic voting. From that moment, REV ceased to be an experiment or a temporary procedure and became a deeply embedded institution of the Russian electoral system.
In Moscow that same year, the city’s legal framework was brought into line with the novelties of federal legislation. Thus, on 25 May 2022, Moscow City Law No. 13 introduced Article 68.1 on remote electronic voting into the Moscow Electoral Code. It was brief and mainly referred to federal regulation, but politically it meant that Moscow’s REV also ceased to be an experiment.
At the 2022 elections, federal REV was already used in seven regions. In Moscow, at the municipal elections, electronic voting became dominant: around 72% of voters’ ballots were cast via REV. Average turnout by district was 33.9%, whereas at the comparable 2017 municipal elections it had been just 14.8%. Technically, the Moscow system changed after 2021 — in particular, the notorious “re-voting” was removed. However, new elements appeared: the ability to tick a box to check one’s vote, an electronic voter list, and also unique candidate IDs, which, according to researchers, further complicated independent verification and created opportunities for vote substitution.
2023: terminals at polling stations and the first major failures of the new model
On 31 May 2023, a small technical Moscow City Law No. 13 was adopted, which inserted REV into the article of the Electoral Code on ballots.
At the 2023 Moscow mayoral election, REV became practically the main method of voting. 2.67 million out of 3.27 million voters cast their ballots through it, i.e. around 81.5% of all voting participants. The federal system was also gradually adapting: that same year it was used in 24 regions, where just over a million people voted through it — less than 10% of the total number of voters in those regions.
It was in 2023 that electronic voting terminals appeared en masse at Moscow polling stations for the first time. Formally, a voter came to the polling station, but their vote went into the same REV system as the internet votes. This fundamentally changed the meaning of the polling station: it ceased to be a place of observable paper voting and turned into merely an access point to an electronic system closed to verification.
The campaign was accompanied by failures. Due to problems with the electronic voter list, some Muscovites could not vote either online or at the polling station: some did not receive SMS confirmations; others were told at polling stations that they had already voted via REV. In Novosibirsk Oblast, the head of the regional election commission effectively admitted that the commission could not independently solve the problem with the federal system, because it does not control its operation at all.
A separate notable story of 2023 was the Moscow Oblast gubernatorial election, where observer Viktor Tolstoguzov alleged the substitution of REV upload files. According to the materials he presented to the court, two different sets of files containing voters’ expressions of will appeared on the portal, both of which were signed with the electronic signature of the REV TEC. The court, however, refused to fully examine these circumstances and dismissed Tolstoguzov’s claim.
2024: the presidential election and the near-total displacement of paper in Moscow
2024 was the year of large-scale use of REV at the presidential election. This was the first presidential election in Russia where electronic voting was used so widely. At the 2024 presidential election, REV was used in Moscow and 28 other regions. In Moscow, 68–71% of voting participants cast their ballots via REV. In the 28 regions where the federal REV platform was available, around 4.4 million people voted electronically — that is roughly 15% of all those who voted specifically in those 28 regions.
At the same time, if one calculates the share of those who voted via REV across the whole of Russia excluding Moscow but including regions where REV was not used at all, it stood at 5–5.5%.
The official result of the presidential election was 87.28% for Vladimir Putin, with a turnout of 77.49%. Anomalies were observed not only in the Moscow system but also in the federal one:
In almost all regions, the maximum number of electronic votes fell on the first minute of voting.
On the second day, synchronous activity patterns were observed in regions from different time zones: people in western regions, where it was daytime, and in eastern regions, where night had already fallen, suddenly began voting en masse at the same time. This is easily explained if the “activity” was displayed not by real voters but by fraudsters who were sitting, for example, in Moscow and fabricating votes during their working day.
The number of votes cast in some regions turned out to be greater than the number of registered voters, by roughly 211,000 people. In some cases, this produced a turnout above 100%! Of course, this could have been a technical error — but for some reason it was strictly in favour of the main candidate, Vladimir Putin.
In autumn 2024, at the Moscow City Duma elections, the Moscow model took the next step: a paper ballot could be obtained only by prior request. If a voter did not order paper in advance, they were directed by default to vote via a terminal. As a result, less than 5% of voters cast a paper ballot. In some ballot boxes at polling stations, there was literally one ballot, which created a separate problem for the secrecy of the vote.
2025: CEG, regional caution and controlled electronic voting
On 23 May 2025, Federal Law No. 115-FZ was adopted. It clarified the concepts of “electronic voting,” “remote electronic voting” and “complex for electronic voting” (CEG). According to this law, the CEG ceases to be merely a device for automated vote counting at a polling station; it now ensures “the preservation and transmission of data on the expression of will for the establishment of results.” This amendment effectively opens the way for the spread of the Moscow model: the voter is at the polling station, but their vote goes into an electronic system where it is stored, transmitted and counted outside the usual precinct procedure, without the possibility of recounting the votes manually under the supervision of observers.
At the 2025 elections, REV was used in 23 regions. The share of REV where it was used became significant, albeit not yet total. At the elections of regional heads, the average share of electronic voting was 18.2% of the total number of voters on the list and 34.7% of all those who voted. The maximum values among the gubernatorial campaigns were in Chuvashia — around 35% of all those who voted, and in the Republic of Komi — around 25.5%. At the legislative assembly elections, the average share of REV was around 15.1% of the voter list and 33% of all those who voted.
Interestingly, REV in the regions did not always produce a unidirectional result in favour of the authorities. In some gubernatorial campaigns, the authorities’ candidate received more via REV than in the region as a whole, while in others — unexpectedly less. At the legislative assembly elections, the picture was also multidirectional. One can assume that regional elites have no real influence over REV, and that decisions on fraud in one direction or another (or the absence thereof) are made in Moscow. Therefore, for now, the regions treat REV with caution.
A separate noteworthy episode of 2025 was the reports of controlled electronic voting points in Fryazino, Moscow Oblast. According to observers’ materials, state employees were brought to specially prepared premises with smartphones and prompted how to vote. After the public discovery of such points, the intensity of electronic voting in the city, according to analysis, noticeably decreased. In Moscow, on 24 September 2025, Moscow City Law No. 37 was adopted, amending the wording of Article 68.1 of the Electoral Code. It retained its referential character to federal regulation. This is telling: Moscow, already possessing its own infrastructure, is now simply synchronising it with the federal one.
The main outcomes of 2025 are that REV has become part of a broader system of administrative mobilisation. It does not always automatically increase the authorities’ result, but it expands the infrastructure of managed voting.
Overall conclusion
Over seven years, REV has travelled the path from an experiment in three Moscow constituencies to a permanent institution of federal electoral legislation.
In 2019, it was a small experiment, but was already used in politically sensitive Moscow.
In 2020, it reached the federal level through the constitutional vote and was supplemented by multi-day voting.
In 2021, REV noticeably changed the political outcome in Moscow for the first time.
In 2022, despite the scandals, it was enshrined in law.
In 2023, electronic voting via terminals arrived at physical polling stations.
In 2024, the paper ballot in Moscow became a rare exception, and questions also arose about the federal system.
In 2025, the amendments on CEG opened the way for the further spread of the terminal model to the regions.
Over the years, the overall percentage of votes cast via the internet has grown. Moreover, the role of traditional, observable voting is increasingly shrinking. The paper ballot has formally been preserved, but is gradually yielding to an opaque digital procedure. For Moscow, this has become a way of maintaining control over a huge and politically active electorate.
For the regions, federal REV remains a contentious tool for now: it helps mobilise voters, but at the same time transfers part of the control to the federal centre. However, it is highly likely that the role of REV will also grow in the regions. Electronic voting will be presented as a convenience, paper voting as a special option, and the polling station will increasingly turn from a place of vote counting into merely an access point to the electronic system. A full transition to internet voting will almost completely eliminate the possibility of any real independent observation of elections.