Active voting rights in the digital age: Legal aspect

Abstract

The article considers an analysis of the digital transformation of the electoral process in Russia. This became possible with the introduction of a new method of voting in Russia — remote electronic voting (REV). The article examines legal and technological transformation of mechanisms that allow voters to express their will in elections regardless of their location. The experience of legislative innovations in Moscow in terms of integrating the paper and electronic voter list (EVL) in the context of the introduction of the REV, new mechanisms for electronic voting in the form of electronic voting terminals (EVT) in the elections in Moscow in September 2023. The authors analyze the legislative regulation of the REV in the context of the implementation of active suffrage on an extraterritorial basis, the discussion about which has repeatedly arisen at the level of the CEC of Russia and the Constitutional Court of Russia, but before the introduction of the REV, EVT and EVL did not fully fail to free and mobile extraterritorial voting (according to the location). The hypothesis of the authors is that the introduction of digital services in the form of EVTs integrated into the electronic voting system, the use of EVL, will expand the rights of voters, which in general will lead to an increase in voter turnout, and, as a result, a higher legitimization of elected authorities. In the event of successful experience in the application of EVT and the demand for such method of voting among voters, especially taking into account the mobility of the voter’s choice of the place of voting, a new principle of suffrage can be enshrined in law — a free choice of method of voting (traditional, with using a paper ballot, remotely using a REV or a EVT).