Tag: Russia

Reading List – 8th October 2020

Russia and Europe: Stuck on Autopilot

This is a long read which looks at Russia’s relationships with three key European players – Germany, France and the UK. Andrew Weiss of Carnegie argues that at a time when Russia could be exploiting EU and NATO weaknesses to subtly further its foreign policy ambitions, it is acting too bluntly. 

Germany has traditionally separated business ties from politics, but there are strong calls for the Nord-Stream 2 project to be cancelled or put on hold. Whilst these are being resisted by Chancellor Merkel and her likely successors, there is clearly a block to any new ventures.

President Macron has continued the French tradition of seeking closer ties with Russia, partly as a demonstration of an alternative view of Europe that does not rely on the USA. Russia has proved less responsive however and continues to undertake projects in Francophone Africa which the Elysee Palace views as treading on its toes. If Russia can have a sphere of influence then whay cannot France?

As for the UK, Russian money is deeply embedded here and the ISC report showed just how close the Conservative party and Kremlin have become. But activities such as the Skripal poisoning led to the UK co-ordinating a global response which Russia did not predict.

Europe’s Longest-Running Conflict Can’t Be Ignored

Another piece about the Armenia/Azerbaijan conflict, this time from Thomas de Waal of Carnegie. Her argues that the conflict cannot be ignored and can only be resolved with Russian assistance. 

The Foreign Secretary’s Evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee: 10 Things We Learned

Sophia Gaston, the director of the British Foreign Policy Group, looks at Dominic Raab’s evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee for clues as to the outcome of the Government’s strategic foreign policy review.

There appears to be a very nuanced stance on China with a desire to keep them in the room and talking whilst also making sure they cannot dominate multilateral institutions while America is focussed elsewhere. There is even talk of a boycott of the forthcoming Beijing Winter Olympics.

However it seems the UK will continue to press the idea of being a champion of democracy and human rights whilst maintianing strong ties to Saudi Arabia and other repressive regimes.

As far as Russia is concerned, there doesn’t appear to be a lot of new policy around the corner. Perhaps sensing that strong action to counter corrupt money housed in London would simply highlight the claims made in the ISC report, Raab downplayed the issue, although he did raise the possibility of Magnitsky type action in the future.

The Challenge of Observing American Democracy

This is a great read for those of us interested or involved in the election observation business.

Reading List Special – The Armenia/Azerbaijan conflict 2nd October 2020

Three links today which all explore issues surrounding the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Is Peace Possible Between Armenia and Azerbaijan?

The first comes from Carnegie Europe and brings together a wide range of expert views on the conflict and when/whether it will be peacefully resolved. There are some views which appear more pessimistic and some which are pure pie in the sky – you can judge for yourself which might be which.

Turkey backs Azerbaijan in war with Armenia as Russia stands by

AL-Monitor’s Amberin Zaman takes the general view that Russia is letting this conflict play out for a while so that both sides are exhausted and to show that the Minsk Format is ineffective. By then stepping in and determining a ceasefire (if not peace), Russia will reassert its regional dominance.

No peacemakers for the new/old Caucasian war

On the other hand Pavel Baev for Brookings suggests that Russia was largely caught out by the conflict flaring up at this time as its attention was focussed on Belarus.

A few hot (bad) takes from me:

  • The US is distracted and showing once again that it does not have the will or capacity to be the world leader as it once did. This can change, of course, but shows no signs of doing so at the moment.
  • Turkey’s overt intervention on the side of Azerbaijan is new and one further example of Erdogan’s desire to be a regional power (or more). Whilst Russia might be prepared to tolerate Turkish actions in Syria and Libya, will they be happy that this is also happening in their own backyard, the ‘near abroad’?
  • Armenia is Russia’s most dependable ally. So why has the Kremlin not immediately come down on the side of Yerevan? Partly, I suspect, because they want to chastise Pashinyan for using the ‘my big brother is going to beat you up’ threat.
  • The Minsk process is at risk of failing completely. The three co-chairs are Russia, France and the US. Of these, only France seems to be fulfilling its remit at the moment – without great success. Minsk is a subsidiary of OSCE which has been bogged down with internal arguments largely started by Azerbaijan and Turkey.
  • Diplomatic calls for both sides to stand down and negotiate are the equivalent of ‘thoughts and prayers’.

United Russia still the Kremlin’s favoured party for Duma elections, local polls suggest

The end for United Russia is not nigh. The party that has dominated Russian politics since 2003 thanks to its connections to Presidents Putin and Medvedev suffered some reversals in last week’s local and regional elections, but it has not been abandoned by the Kremlin as some had predicted.

Overall, United Russia (Единая Россия) saw its vote share fall from 59% in the regional elections held in 2015 to 47.6% this time – a drop of 11.4%. That is a big chunk and falling below the 50% mark is certainly a blow to the pride of the ruling party. Also losing ground was A Just Russia (Справедливая Россия) whose vote share fell from 9.8% to 7.8%. Two parties from the systemic opposition gained ground. The Communist Party (КПРФ) rose from 12.3% to 13.5% and the LDPR (ЛДПР) from 9.9% to 11.6%.

But these tiny gains don’t explain where all of United Russia’s votes went. The answer is a mix of candidates standing as independents and new parties which may or may not be controlled by the Kremlin.

The reason for United Russian’s fall is that over the past few years the party has been the lightning rod for protests against unpopular government policies. From domestic waste disposal to plans for new church buildings, there have been a number of local issues which have seen large-scale protests. These are protests not against the system, nor against oligarchic corruption – issues which might be expected to draw a heavy handed response – and as such they have flourished. One national policy that has cut through has been the repeated attempts to cut public spending on pensions. To protect President Putin as much as possible, it has been United Russia – a party to which Putin has never belonged and which merely endorses his independent candidacy – that has taken the blame.

The concern has been that maybe United Russia has taken on too much of the burden of unpopular decisions. Maybe it is time to cut it adrift and ally the Kremlin to a new political party, or even to a range of them. These results seem to indicate that although significantly bloodied, United Russia will still be a major player in the Duma contests next year.

But for the immediate contests, a large number of candidates for single mandate seats, including those for regional governor, decided to stand as independents. And such a tactic worked. No incumbent governor who stood for re-election was defeated.

In addition, the move towards more proportional voting systems for regional assemblies is being reversed. To take the exampe of Astrakhan. Back in the elections of 2010 there were 35 seats on the assembly, all elected by first-past-the-post and therefore favouring strong individual campaigns rather than parties. The Medvedev reforms led to a balance of 18 majoritarian seats and 18 elected via party lists – a boost for the chances of United Russia when that party was running strongly in the polls. But this time around there was a reversion to 36 single member seats and no list. The unpopularity of United Russia could not have a chance to affect the result and a slate of loyalists could be assured, albeit running under a number of banners. Other regions have seen the relative proportions of single member and list seats change in different ways, but the trend has been towards electing individuals rather than parties.

The new parties also bear close inspection. I wrote a few months ago about the Kremlin’s efforts to set these up. Four new parties eventually competed across a number of regions, although some of these suffered from the usual attempts by authorities to limit competition by keeping them off the ballot paper.

The four new parties were the New People’s Party (Новые люди), the Direct Democracy Party (Партия прямой демократии), For Justice (За правду) and The Green Alternative (Зеленая альтернатива). They were joined by The Russian Party of Pensioners for Social Justice (РППСС – Российская партия пенсионеров за социальную справедливость) who have been around for a while and sought to capitalise on the unpopularity of the pension reforms. 

The Pensioners Party won seats in seven of the nine regions they were on the ballot and gained an average of 5.9%. The New People’s Party (which includes some outwardly liberal figures in its leadership) won an average of just over 7% where they were on the ballot and took 15% in Tomsk, a student city which has been the subject of widespread protests recently. For Truth (apparently a nationalist party) averaged just 2% but obviously enjoyed administrative support in the Ryazan region where they got almost 7% and won seats. For Direct Democracy (a party apparently set up to draw gamers to the polls) was the only new party to fail to win a seat anywhere as they scored between 0.3% and 2.3% in the various regions in which they competed – although that might be too strong a term as there is no evidence of much campaigning taking place.

Perhaps most interesting was The Green Alternative which also did not appear to have any real presence on the ground but who nevertheless managed to win seats in the Chelyabinsk region through suspicious activity in the city of Zlatoust. Here the new party won up to 39% of the vote in some polling stations and averaged almost 20%. Conversely, United Russia was declared to have won just 3%. In concurrent city elections United Russia won 20-30% in the same areas. The local suspicion is that the party vote totals on result sheets were simply swapped around.

But why should such results matter (except to people in the Chelyabinsk Region, of course). It is because any party which holds at least one regional seat can stand candidates for the Duma without having to collect voter signatures. The requirement to collect at least 200,000 voter signatures has long been the means by which genuine opposition candidates such as Alexey Navalny have been kept off the ballot. So at next year’s Duma polls we will see candidates from three of the four new parties on the ballot. The options for the Kremlin are still therefore wide open. They can continue to seek an overall majority for United Russia. They can allow new parties into the Duma and have a broad coalition of deputies who will back President Putin on key issues or they might even allow the Communists and LDPR to gain greater representation.

Keeping the options open assists in the battle against the ‘smart voting’ tactic currently being advocated by Navalny. Whilst some of his allies have made it to the ballot paper and even been successful in municipal elections, his main effort is now focussed on backing whichever candidate looks most likely to beat the Kremlin loyalist. He has been happy to back both Communists and LDPR candidates in recent contests as well as independents. With multiple parties aiming to compete in each seat in the Duma elections next year it might not be obvious who is the Kremlin favourite until the last minute, making it difficult to set up a contest that the opposition has any chance of winning. Navalny might even end up backing the candidate also favoured by the Kremlin. It is a cat and mouse game in which voters are often left out in the cold.

These recent election contests were also notable for formalising some of the new practices brought in during the ‘National Vote’ on the new constitution. Voting was spread across three days with more electronic voting and, supposedly because of worries about Covid-19, voting could also take place outside the confines of the polling station. None of these did anything to boost turnout – the ostensible reason – and participation actually fell in most areas, but they will almost certainly have helped to marshall the ‘payroll vote’ to back establishment candidates.

This article uses figures from research carried out by Alexander Kynev, Associate Professor, Higher School of Economics, and presented to a Chatham House seminar (held on the record). I am grateful for his work.

Reading List – 10th September 2020

After a few weeks off, here is some catch up reading on key issues:

What Russia Really Has in Mind for Belarus – And why Western leaders must act

A look at one possible plan that President Putin has for his troubled neighbour and how it migh unfold. The authors argue that rather than an army of Little Green Men, there are a load of Little Grey Men inside Belarus gradually moving it closer and closer to Russia.

Democracy After Coronavirus: Five challenges for the 2020s

This is a long read – a great study on the difference that the pandemic has made to elections and the wider issue of democracy. In this regard, this paper argues that there are five main challenges for democracies after coronavirus: protecting the safety and integrity of elections, finding the right place for expertise, coping with resurgent populism and nationalism, countering homegrown and foreign disinformation, and defending the democratic model.

Lessons learned with social media monitoring

Another long read – this time a look at how different domestic election observers have tried to tackle the task of monitoring what is being said and by whom on social media. Regular readers will know this is a keen area of interest of mine and this paper sums up the great work done by the various NGOs as well as the frustrations they face.

How President Putin won his National Vote (and gave himself 12 more years in office)

Russian voters have approved President Putin’s plans to change the constitution (and coincidentally allow him to serve two further six-year terms in office) by a margin of more than three to one in a national vote held over the past week.

The fact, and even the margin, of victory should surprise no one since there was no opposition campaign allowed and the regime pulled out all the stops to both boost turnout and secure a yes vote. There were also no effective election observers on the ground to highlight foul play.

The constitutional changes were announced in January, supposedly as a means of rebalancing power towards Parliament and away from the President. But at the last minute, in a carefully choreographed intervention, President Putin’s supporters in the Duma suggested that the term limits slate should be wiped clean, effectively allowing the incumbent a further twelve years in office after his current term ends in 2024.

Originally scheduled for April but postponed due to the coronavirus, the decision has been made over the course of the week of voting following the massive Victory Day parade to commemorate the 75th anniversary the end of World War 2.

Putin’s efforts to boost turnout are not unique to this poll. For his re-election in 2018 he received more than 70% support on a turnout around 65% and he asked for the same again this time. And once again there are a massive range of measures, both official and not, in place to help him get his wish. So many measures, in fact, that even the loyalist chair of the Electoral Commission, Ella Pamfilova, has warned that turnout fraud could discredit the entire process.

The most legitimate (and a move that other countries could do well to learn from) allows electors to change their polling location via an app to make sure they don’t miss out because of work or travel commitments. Train stations, ice breakers and even the polar research base all had their own polling stations for this purpose and cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin became the first person to vote online from space.

But, less officially, many tricks have been used to tempt people to vote. There were lots of beautification contests giving electors a choice over municipal spending to clear up local eyesores. Many polling stations hosted childrens concerts or offered cheap food and drink to encourage people along. Others held raffles with each voter given a ticket just for turning up. Sadly these might not have been quite the draw if the example of one Omsk polling station is anything to go by as the polling station chairperson conducting the draw happened to pick his own name in the contest to win an apartment.

Because of Covid-19, there was a fear that many electors will be dissuaded from voting through health concerns. A new law passed earlier this month extended the limited right to vote from home and allowed electors to vote in courtyards outside polling stations where it is thought the virus cannot be transmitted so easily. And in Moscow region a new internet voting system has been developed with more than 93% of those who registered to use the system turning out to vote, although there are allegations that people have been able to vote both over the internet and in person.

These changes would make life a lot more difficult for independent poll watchers if such existed. Longstanding domestic groups such as Golos no longer have the right to attend polling stations. If they want to observe they must join state-run Civic Chambers whose leaders – themselves state employees – will decide the wording of any observation statement. And because it is not a formal referendum, the law ‘does not envisage’ the presence of missions from the OSCE or any other credible international group. A group of far-right and other Kremlin-loyal politicians from Germany’s AfD and Italy’s League parties have been flown in to give approval to the poll, however.

There are reports of an effort to develop tracking software so that businesses can see whether their staff have voted. Such concern is usually unwarranted. Most companies rely to a greater or lesser extent on state contracts and, with the result of any poll or election a foregone conclusion, most employees recognise that their jobs are at risk if their firm does not record a high turnout. The odd vote against is accepted so long as participation is high. With the popularity of the regime so low, however, extra precautions have been taken. Notwithstanding that, there are some sections of society where high participation can be guaranteed and more than 90% of the military have voted.

In the past, apartment blocks in areas with historic records of low turnout, mainly in Moscow and St Petersburg, would find themselves ‘accidentally’ left off the voter list. Residents who turn up to vote receive an apology and are added to a special supplemental list. But anyone who fails to turn up was never on the list in the first place and so does not impact on turnout levels. Without observers on the ground, it is impossible to tell if that tactic is in use again, but it is reasonable to assume so as the President seeks the strongest mandate possible for his reforms. There are also the usual allegations that polling station officials have cast votes on behalf of those who do not turn up, even if they are dead. Anything to ensure that the area they are responsible for doesn’t draw attention to itself with a significantly low turnout.

Perhaps the only constraint on President Putin is that he could not afford to stretch credibility too far. Those who voted against the proposals or who boycotted the event altogether needed to see their decision reflected in the locally declared result. Whilst a WCIOM poll found that just 42% of Russians believe that the results will relate to the actual choices made by voters, the 70/70 formula was devised to be just about credible whilst giving a comprehensive thumbs up to the idea of President-for-Life Vladimir Putin.

 

 

 

Reading List – 19th June 2020

Belarus will hold a Presidential election on August 8th and Ryhor Astapenia, a Fellow at Chatham House has written a piece suggesting that, although President Alexander Lukashenko will win this time, the three pillars on which his rule is cemented appear to be crumbling and it is time to consider a Belarus without him in charge.

In his preview of the election, Andrew Roth for The Guardian looks at the measures being taken by the Lukashenko regime to crack down on the candidates running against him. Many of these opponents come from within the establishment and therefore have more credibility than previous electoral contestants.

At the same time, the Director of ODIHR, the election observing wing of OSCE, has publicly called on Belarus to issue the necessary invitation for international organisations to observe the election. Issuing such an invitation is a requirement of Belarus’ membership of OSCE.

Screen Shot 2020-06-19 at 11.52.41

 

Ben Noble has written a very interesting article looking at the national vote in Russia which starts next week. The point that stood out for me was that the vote only goes to emphasise the weakness of existing state institutions such as the Duma and Constitutional Court.

 

 

Quinton Scribner and Dr Richard Connolly have written a Chatham House article on the likely effect of the virus on Russia’s economy. For me this provided the clearest explanation yet of why Russia is so reluctant to spend the national ‘rainy day fund’ that they have built up over the years.

 

Parsing Putin – what the Russian President’s article says about World War 2 and modern history

President Putin’s article in National Interest on the Great Patriotic War is very well worth reading to understand how is is seeking to portray the history of that period, particularly in light of the proposed changes to the constitution which would make it a criminal act to deny the official version of history. That is the message for domestic consumption at least.

But it’s message to an international audience is contained in its last paragraphs. It calls for a new conference of the modern great powers – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – a plea for Russia to be readmitted to polite diplomatic society. Given the context of an article about the destructive power of world war, this is a none too subtle hint at the alternative.

The structure of the article is a selective tour through the history of the 20th century. First and foremost, Putin states that it was the Soviet Union – all component parts of it – that was primarily responsible for defeating Hitler and Nazism.

As for the causes of the Second World War (and he does give the conflict that name on one occasion), he says that it was inevitable following the Treaty of Versailles and the feeling of injustice that this provoked in Germany. That’s a cause that is referred to also in western history teaching – or at least it was when I was at school. In addition, he says that Western firms helped Germany by investing in factories there that would be used to produce arms and that the borders drawn by the First World War victors (the Soviet Union being concerned in its own on-going revolution by this point) meant continued resentment in many parts of the continent.

But it is the ‘Munich Betrayal’ to which President Putin returns on a number of occasions as his pre-eminent reason for the Second World War. He says that France and the UK regarded Hitler

“as quite a reputable politician and was a welcome guest in the European capitals”.

He points out that Stalin did not meet with Hitler and that it was the division of Czechoslovakia, in which Poland was also complicit, that was the final straw.

And it was as a result of the Munich agreement and the decision by the Western Powers to allow Japan a free rein in China that the Soviet Union was forced to sign a non-aggression pact (Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement)

“to buy precious time to strengthen the country’s defences”.

Putin accepts that the secret protocols to Molotov-Ribbentrop (those that agreed the division of Eastern Europe between Germany and Russia) were worthy of condemnation but notes that the Soviet Parliament did just that in 1989 whilst the West continues to deny the impact that their joint agreements with Hitler had.

Once the war started, Putin claims that the decision by the French and British not to fight hard in the West allowed the German to concentrate their resources in the East. He suggests that this was a deliberate ploy to break the Soviet Union and that Soviet forces only invaded Poland as a last resort.

Putin identifies Churchill as being in favour of working closely with the Soviets (despite his hatred of Communism) to defeat Germany and acknowledges the efforts and sacrifices of UK, US, Chinese and French nations in the fight against Hitler but is clear that these were a mere supporting act to the leading role played by the Soviet army.

Finally, Putin turns to the United Nations and says that having countries with veto power is necessary to keeping the peace as it forces the big powers to negotiate and to find compromise, just as they did at Yalta, Tehran and other wartime conferences.

Reading List – 12th June 2020

Twitter has disclosed more than 32,000 accounts which have been part of three state backed schemes to promote disinformation and acting in an inauthentic manner. These accounts are said to be part of state sponsored operations and existed in China, Russia and Turkey.

The 1,152 Russian accounts were said to be promoting the ruling United Russia party and denigrating rivals. The Turkish accounts were engaged in similar activity related to the AK Parti.

Twitter’s opening line of their press release is particularly interesting. They state:

“Today we are disclosing 32,242 accounts to our archive of state-linked information operations — the only one of its kind in the industry.”

That Twitter should have such an archive is welcome. But it seems a shame that other platforms do not and that there is not an industry-wide archive. A similar case can (and has) been made for a multi-platform library of political adverts. Combatting improper and illegal behaviour on social media cannot be undertaken on a platform by platform basis.

 

 

RFE/RL reports apparent confirmation that Moldovan oligarch Vlad Plahotniuc has been hiding out in Moldova.

Plahotniuc was the power behind the Democratic Party and fled in June 2019 after a joint action by Russia, Europe and the USA to try to end the corruption that was endemic under his regime. It has been claimed that he stole more than $1bn, the equivalent to roughly one eighth of the Moldovan economy. 

Plahotniuc apparently made his way to the USA where his request for asylum was rejected and he was ordered to be deported. That deportartion has not happened yet however and it is claimed that he has multiple passports and identities.

 

The Carnegie Moscow Center seems to be going all in on President Putin at the moment. Tatiana Stanovaya argues that Covid-19 and the fall in the oil price have exposed the holes in the Russian regime, whilst Alexander Baunov says that Putin has gone missing during the crisis.

 

Another Carnegie piece, this time looking at the electoral challenges faced by Alexander Lukashenko, the President of Belarus.

Russia’s remote voting proposals will lessen transparency and trust

In an already controlled environment, the latest moves to change electoral systems in Russia have the potential to further tighten the grip of the Kremlin. A Bill to enable candidate registration signatures to be collected via the state services app has been amended at the last minute to allow remote voting via a number of means. It passed the Duma (the lower house of parliament) after lawmakers were given just 36 minutes to see the proposed amendments. Covid-19 restrictions limited the amount of media and public scrutiny that was possible of the procedings.

What appears to have emerged from the process is a Bill that will allow for the development of internet voting, for postal voting and to expand the range of people who are qualified to vote at home on election day. In addition, for health reasons, voting will now be allowed in the precincts of the polling station as well as the voting room itself.

There is an axiom that any time you take the ballot paper out of the control of election officials, that vote becomes less secure and more susceptible to fraud. These new measures all remove the oversight that election administrators – and observers – will have over the process. It is perhaps no wonder that Russia’s leading independent election observation group – Golos – have said of the changes: 

“Their implementation without simultaneously ensuring guarantees of effective control will increase the level of distrust of citizens in elections.”

To take the changes one by one:

Internet Voting

Internet voting is often seen as the solution to many election problems. In the UK it was trialed as a response to declining turnout in the early 2000s. But just because someone tells a pollster that they are more likely to vote if they can do so from home via the internet, doesn’t mean they will actually do so. TV programmes which use internet voting have many hours of positive broadcast coverage and still only get a small proportion of their audience to vote.

As I have written before, internet voting is doubly problematic. First in that it takes the vote out of the polling station. Second, that it is reliant on ‘black box technology’ so the voter cannot see directly how their vote contributes to the result and there is no paper trail. If some malign actor, either within the election commission or hacking in from outside, wanted to fix the result then it is far more possible with internet voting and almost impossible to prove.

The only country which successfully uses internet voting for national elections is Estonia which has spent many millions (in a very small country) on security. This includes a reader for every household so that voters can insert their national identity card to be validated. Even then, I would argue, it is not completely secure as other members of the household could vote using a person’s card – particularly if they are vulnerable or disinclined to vote. And the chances of pressurized voting are obvious.

Postal Voting

Postal votes have been the subject of many election fraud cases around the world. It is not quite true to assert, as President Trump does, that all postal voting is riddled with fraud. But postal votes are subject to many of the risks of other forms of remote voting.

Where a person cannot make it to vote on election day, postal votes can be a good thing. In the UK we used to have a ‘for cause’ system which meant you needed a valid reason for asking for one. Now we operate an ‘on demand’ system. This avoids the need to tie up doctors and employers and for election administrators to deal with lots of paperwork.

Where the UK – and others – have largely failed is when they seek to adopt universal postal voting – ie every voter is sent a postal vote to their registered address. I have dealt with such issues here. In short, if a person is not aware that their vote is being sent by post then it is easy to abstract and cast illegally. Switzerland is a country where all-postal ballots do work well, but is a very different electoral culture.

In order to have an effective postal vote system, a country needs to have a means of verifying that the application and the resultant vote come from the registered voter. You don’t want to allow others to apply and then vote on your behalf. This means having lots of staff, lots of time and specialist signature matching software. My experience of the Russian system is that the elections staff are generally pretty well trained and motivated, but they are short staffed and would need a significant increase in their budgets and allocation of high quality hardware from local administrations which are often reluctant to let them have anything other than the oldest computers.

Traditionally, Russia has sought to address the problem of people being away from home on election day by allowing ‘place of stay’ voting. This system, managed by the state services app, allows a voter to move their polling station up to a couple of days before the election. If you are away from home on business or an economic migrant, you can simply change where you vote to a local station. And there are special polling stations created in hospitals and railway stations, and even on ice-breakers and at the Antarctic Research Station. So with all these options, are postal votes really needed?

Early Voting

Early voting has been used for some time in a number of countries. It is not the most susceptible to fraud as it still requires the voter to attend a polling station (their own or a central hub) where they are dealt with by election administrators in the same manner as on election day. However, it can stretch the resources of party and other observers who are there to ensure that nothing untoward happens. And it can make it easier for the same voter to cast multiple ballots by going from polling station to polling station.

Home Voting

Home voting has been the traditional means by which Russia allows those who cannot come to a polling station on election day to vote. It has always been restricted to the old and people with disabilities and requires an application by the elector which is then adjudicated by the polling station committee. If approved, then on election day a subset of the committee, plus observers, takes a small version of the ballot box to the home of the voter. Although in most cases this is a workable solution, it requires the intrusion into the voter’s home of up to eight people and it is often difficult to ensure the secrecy of the vote.

The proposal now is to allow carers as well as those being cared for to vote in this way. That may seem a logical step, but simply extends the problem, I would suggest.

Precinct Voting

The proposal is to allow voters to cast their ballots not just in the confines of the polling booths, but also within designated areas within the precincts of the polling station building – in courtyards, for example. This is being done, it is claimed, for health reasons.

Fairly obviously, loss of secrecy is a big problem with this proposal. If people are wandering around with their ballot then it can be seen by others. In my experience in Russia at least one third of voters do not bother to fold their ballot after completion. 

I don’t know whether there will be polling booths set up in the courtyards where voting will be allowed, but the chances are that these will be as unpopular as those in the officisl voting room if there is a fear of Covid-19.

Perhaps the other major problem is that election officials and observers will find it difficult to track what is happening. This makes frauds such as carousel voting, illicit pressure, family voting and proxy voting all more easy to achieve.

On the other hand…

I certainly would not suggest that the Russian voting system is in the dark ages. The place of stay voting system is very good indeed and deserves to be studied by many supposedly advanced democracies. And the state services portal makes it possible to accomplish a lot of tasks related to the elections process in a simple and speedy manner. That’s a boon to voters as well as to the state. If there were to be a form of internet voting then this might well be the basis for such a system.

That said, however, it is clear that the changes being developed as a result of this Bill are not going to make the Russian system more secure and will actually do only a little to enhance access to voting. Fundamentally, they open the way for those who wish to rig the vote to do so. Citizen confidence in elections stems from knowing that votes are cast freely and that the result is an accurate counting of only legitimate votes. Sadly I think that this Bill takes Russia away from those principles.

Reading List – 15th May 2020

Apologies for not having done one of these for a while…

 

Dmitri Trenin of Carnegie’s Moscow Center argues that Russia could be squeezed out of a new bipolar world where everything comes down to the USA and China. And while this may be a relief to some in sanctions-affected Russia, he argues that the risk is that Russia loses relevance.

 

In Time Magazine, David Miller argues that just because Netanyahu can annex parts of the West Bank doesn’t mean he will.

 

Nana Kalandadze of International IDEA looks at the aborted attempt to hold an all-postal ballot in Poland last weekend.