There is no point in seriously discussing the ‘elections’ currently taking place in Russia: everyone already knows how they will end.
Supporters and opponents of taking part in the ‘State Duma elections’ have put forward all their arguments, and the debate essentially boils down to who will derive the greatest propaganda benefit from the election results: the opposition, which has sought to use the pre-election platform for a legitimate campaign, or the government, which has demonstrated to the whole world ‘the unity of the Russian people’.
The opposition has, however, split into different camps: the leader of the liberal pacifist party Yabloko, Nikolai Rybakov, has criticised the voting strategy for the State Duma elections proposed by Yulia Naval’naya and Maksim Katz. The strategy of the opposition in exile had been to vote for any party except United Russia on the party lists, and for the main opponents of the ruling party in single-member constituencies, in line with the principle of the ‘smart vote’ proposed by Alexei Navalny, who had already distanced himself from Yabloko years ago, suggesting that Russians should take part in the elections solely as a form of protest. They also launched a dedicated website, containing information on all candidates for the State Duma.
Yabloko, on the other hand – the only party in Russia campaigning for peace – did not heed the appeal from abroad. Rybakov believes that Katz and Naval’naja’s tactics nonetheless imply support for various politicians implicated in repression and the war. In the summer, following Yabloko’s inclusion on the federal list, it had become clear that there were many voices in Russia opposed to the war; however, on 10 August, the Russian Supreme Court excluded Yabloko’s federal list from the elections, and courts in various regions barred most of its candidates from standing in single-member constituencies.
According to journalist Aleksandr Podrabinek, the event nevertheless presents a good opportunity to discuss the elections in general, the shortcomings of the electoral system and the reforms that would be desirable for this democratic institution. Election experts undoubtedly identify numerous shortcomings that need to be addressed, whilst Podrabinek prefers to focus on a single factor, ‘the most important one in the failure of the electoral system in its current form: the secrecy of the vote’. The secrecy of the ballot is an untouchable dogma for all modern democracies, as well as for despots who style themselves as such. The logic is simple: secrecy protects voters from potential pressure prior to the elections and from possible reprisals afterwards, but at the same time allows unscrupulous authorities to manipulate the votes cast, distorting the will of the people. A cast vote becomes anonymous, untraceable and can be transferred to any party at any stage of the count, and this is exactly what happens in Russia and in many other countries.
Consequently, the secrecy of the vote, guaranteed to the voter, becomes a secret from the voter themselves: they cannot verify anything and are forced to rely on the integrity of the bureaucracy overseeing the elections.
All well and good if this bureaucracy is honest, as in proper democracies, but what happens if it is not? There seems to be only one solution: a voter’s vote should be closely linked to the election result, so that everyone can see their own vote in the overall tally and verify that no fraud has taken place. With today’s information technology, creating a public database of this kind would be a straightforward task. The secrecy of the vote would be removed from the control of the state apparatus, significantly guaranteeing the fairness and transparency of elections. For voters, the secrecy of the vote is more a matter of tradition than of pressing necessity; most people do not hide their political views and are willing to express them in the streets or at polling stations.
The only way to guarantee this absolute transparency would be to vote exclusively electronically: the voter accesses the system using their passport details, which generate a unique, single-use code enabling them to vote and to immediately view their personal code and the result of their vote in the general database. To prevent future disputes, the system would allow voters to print a ‘voting receipt’ showing the unique code and the vote cast. According to the journalist and human rights activist, ‘this is obviously a general concept, but the central idea is the link between a unique code and the vote cast, which should never be separated’. Everyone must be able to trace their own vote and verify the accuracy of the count. One could even add one’s name next to the unique code, for those who are not afraid to reveal their political views.
In a country like Russia, where it is impossible to express dissent publicly in any way, voting can be one of the few means of opposing those in power. Elections are still held even in North Korea today, as retaining power without elections is now considered unacceptable. The most important aspect is therefore not the result, but the transparency of the elections and the verifiability of the results, so that voters have a genuine opportunity to understand their civic responsibility and to see the value of their vote. There would also be direct economic benefits: elections would no longer require huge expenditure; the numerous electoral commissions and the cumbersome system of local polling stations, with their associated support staff, would become superfluous. Among other things, this would be a step towards direct democracy: the process from casting a vote to the political outcome would be significantly shortened. In the long term, this would also make it possible to pass laws in this way.
Times are changing, and paper-based elections, polling stations and ballot boxes are inevitably becoming a thing of the past. Breaking down stereotypes is no easy task, as the secrecy of the vote has become deeply ingrained in society as an indispensable necessity of the electoral system. Yet its history is not particularly long, dating back just 170 years, when the secret ballot first appeared in Australia during the 1856 elections and quickly spread across the world. The principle of ‘secrecy’ was appealing to voters, and highly convenient for the authorities and the state apparatus. In reality, the secrecy of the vote in its current form remains a relic to which unscrupulous politicians and usurpers of power will cling until the very end, and this weapon could be taken from them with a simple technical solution.
Podrabinek’s proposal reflects the now unstoppable spread of invasive technologies, which make it almost impossible to defend one’s privacy and assert one’s identity unless one adopts the parameters imposed by artificial platforms. ‘Existential transparency’, moreover, may become a new dimension of social life, and it is no coincidence that over the last two years the Putin regime has been trying by every means to reduce, control and prevent digital communication: however much one tries to dominate even the virtual space, it continually expands and transforms, making it effectively impossible to confine it within traditional boundaries.
Putin increasingly represents a man of a dark past, shut away in his bunker with no direct connection to reality, much like Hitler and Stalin in the last century. After 27 years in power – since Yeltsin appointed him head of government, amidst an increasingly grotesque succession of elections, role swaps and constitutional amendments – his ideology of the ‘Russian world’ at war with the rest of the world has revealed a total lack of substance. There is no Russia capable of spreading ‘traditional values’, inspired by an Orthodox religion with sacred icons that are crumbling, such as Rublev’s ‘Trinity’, which was displayed to glorify the Russian union of peoples and is now irrevocably locked away in a laboratory, as was easy to foresee. There are Russians who go to the polls knowing they have no hope in the composition of parliament, but who nevertheless affirm that they are citizens of a world yet to be discovered, and one that must be made ever more transparent.
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