I attended the World Forum for Democracy at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg this week. We had a very interesting discussion about the new technologies and organising electronic voting in many countries. In Russia, electronic voting is the method for various falsifications. They made it impossible to observe the process.
No new instruments in the authoritarian state can make elections fair. We need to gain the trust for the institutions, and this goal can be reached only if all participants have equal access to the organising process. In post-Putin Russia, the authorities' role in the elections should not be significant, and the process must be transparent.
At first, it will be necessary to abandon any alternative voting forms: early, remote and home. The elections will be offline for those who can come to the polls.
But we still have a question, what can be done in modern authoritarian Russia? Some think oppositionists should stay home and never participate in the unfair process of not playing with a sharpie. But it is wrong thinking. Even such elections still allow opposing the regime, giving room for legal opposition, and showing that there is an alternative point of view.
#elections #russia #strasbourg