Internet voting and shortage of candidates: how 2022 Moscow municipal elections will be held

Author: Yekaterina Grobman

On September 11, 2022, municipal elections will be held in 125 of the capital's 146 districts. It is not yet known whether these elections will be a multi-day process, but it is already certain that remote electronic voting will be used. Parties are preparing for the elections and complaining about shortages of candidates. We looked at the rules of the election and what we can expect from it.

Internet voting

A bill on unified rules for remote electronic voting (REV) has passed its first reading in the State Duma. As Alexey Venediktov, chairman of the Commission for Civil Society Development and Public Oversight of the Moscow Public Chamber and REV promoter, assured, REV will be used in municipal elections if the law is passed in time. By the end of the spring session, the law will probably be passed. Then, according to Venediktov, online voting will take place on Moscow's mos.ru platform. During the State Duma elections, the electronic voting experiment took place in a number of regions; the capital used one platform and the rest of the regions used another one. While the regions published the results shortly after the polls closed, the results in Moscow were published only in the morning: all the opposition candidates who were in the lead in the classic vote lost the election.

'The REV and the multi-day voting is the biggest problem,' says Andrei Morev, head of the Yakimanka municipal district and deputy chairperson of the Moscow branch of Yabloko. – 'We have seen how it works in the State Duma elections: in our district, [Moscow City Duma deputy Sergei] Mitrokhin was winning, and then they introduced REV results – and the outcome was fundamentally different. In my constituency, I will urge to come and vote in person, and definitely on the last day, because there is no control over what happens to the ballot papers at night.' Whether the ‘single voting day’ will be multi-day, the Central Election Commission will decide in June, when the elections are officially called.

The remote electronic voting has aroused criticism of the expert community both during the elections and during the discussion of the bill in the State Duma. The problem with REV is the lack of observation or control over the vote count. In addition, there are no guarantees for the freedom of voting - there were many complaints about the coercion of state employees to participate in REV during the national elections.

Fewer council members

Another innovation is changing the number of members of councils. Last December, the Moscow City Duma passed amendments to the law on local self-government, establishing that the number of councils of municipal deputies would depend on the number of voters per district. Between 10 and 12 deputies would be elected in districts of below 50,000 voters, 10-15 in districts of 50,000 to 100,000 voters, 12-20 from 100,000 to 170,000, and 12-25 in districts over 170,000 voters.

Notably, the majority of districts in the capital have less than 50,000 voters, according to Moscow City Electoral Commission. In 66, there are between 50,000 and 100,000 voters, and only nine districts have more than 100,000 voters. Previously, the councils themselves determined the number of members.

Since mid-January, Moscow's municipal councils have begun to reduce their membership. For example, the number of deputies was reduced from 12 to 10 in Sviblovo, from 15 to 12 in Koptevo, Presnensky, and Timiryazevsky districts, and from 15 to 10 in Biryulevo East, Zyablikovo, Orekhovo-Borisovo North, and Tagansky.

Not enough candidates

A total of about 1,500 deputies will be elected (the number will probably decrease due to the reform, but will still be about 1,300), and few political forces have so many candidates. 'New People', a young parliamentary party, promises to field more than 1,000 candidates. A difficulty for the opposition is the need to collect signatures, exceptions available only to parties represented in the State Duma - meaning that Yabloko will have to collect signatures, despite its faction in the Moscow City Duma. According to Andrei Morev, Yabloko is counting on about 500 candidates.

The incumbent deputy of the Pechatniki district, Sergey Vlasov (non-partisan), plans to run again. 'We will run with the district core team. Of course, there is a problem of staffing hunger - whether we will be able to reach out to the disgruntled residents of the district, whether they want to do it all or not. The tightening of the screws in general and the persecution of activists is bad for enthusiasm,' Vlasov says.

He notes that several bright deputies are working in non-partisan teams: 'Urban Projects' by Maxim Kats and Ilya Varlamov, the deputy academy, joined by State Duma deputy Sergey Obukhov and Left Front coordinator Sergey Udaltsov, the 'Choosing Neighbours' project by former State Duma candidate Marina Litvinovich and former Municipal Deputy Yulia Galyamina, and the school of former Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) Duma candidate Mikhail Lobanov and municipal deputy Alexander Zamyatin.

'There are a lot of schools and not enough candidates for all of them. We need 1,500 candidates. Even if they cut mandates in Moscow and there are 1,200 - that many people are not available. Everyone will have to get together in coalition teams because it is impossible to win otherwise. It would be ideal to go in one front – a Yabloko candidate, a self-nominated candidate, a communist, Kats's candidate - roughly speaking, this would be the most effective team,' believes Vlasov.

Political analyst Abbas Galliamov notes that it is easiest to oppose government candidates at the municipal level; on the other hand, politicians are not attracted to it because they realize that 'the prize is not that big'. 'The experience of 2017 shows that even coming to power in the municipalities, the oppositionists could not change the situation in the country - it is too centralized,' the expert believes. - 'It is possible that the most die-hard oppositionists simply do not want to participate in all this anymore; they would prefer to save their strength for 2024.'

Strategies

Lower-level elections traditionally attract less voter interest. However, the last municipal elections in Moscow were an event because of the surge in political activity in the city. 'In 2017, the authorities made a bid for drying up turnout,' says Alexei Makarkin, first vice president of the Centre for Political Technologies. - 'With low turnout came two mobilizations - administrative on the part of the authorities and political on the part of the opposition. Voters are often lazy to get into the details - they want to be pointed to the right candidates. It applies both to pro-governmental and pro-opposition voters. There was a joke in those days: the former came to the polling stations with pocket calendars with the pro-government candidates on them, while the latter came with smartphones with Gudkov-Kats's list.'

It was the project of political technologist Maksim Kats and former State Duma deputy Dmitry Gudkov, United Democrats (they themselves called it a 'political Uber'), that got almost all the opposition candidates into the councils. Most of them were nominated by Yabloko; some ran as self-nominees. Candidates received help from the political Uber with printing and distributing campaign materials, checking signatures, and fundraising.

In all, the project got 226 of its candidates out of almost a thousand into the councils. In eight city districts, not a single United Russia candidate won a municipal assembly, while in 25 districts, United Russia won a minority of seats. However, they were in the majority overall, with 1,153 mandates. Yabloko got 153, CPRF 44, Just Russia 10, the Growth Party 5, the LDPR 4, PARNAS 2, and 108 were self-nominated.

Why it matters

Long-term planning and the 'municipal filter' dictate the importance of municipal elections for the opposition. In order to run for mayor of Moscow in 2023, a candidate must collect signatures of at least 110 municipal deputies in three-quarters of Moscow's districts. In other words, even if a party takes all seats in 50 districts, but does not get a single deputy in another 50 - it will not help to pass the filter, although numerically, there will be many mandates.

The ruling party has learned from the mistakes of 2017 and will be more active in the municipal elections, believes Alexei Makarkin. 'I think the campaign will be more active. Elections in September result in an administrative candidate competing with garden plots - REV solves this issue for the dependent electorate. In addition, everyone was registered to participate in 2017, while the situation in 2022 is more likely to repeat the scenario of Moscow City Duma 2019 or State Duma 2021 - we should expect a large number of rejections,' sums up the expert.

Russian version may be found here.