The Russian authorities are set to test new ways of manipulating election results during the Moscow City Duma elections in September. In addition to filtering candidates, they will also expand Russia’s electronic voting system, almost entirely ditching paper ballots. This means it should be easy to guarantee the victory of candidates—however dull and uninspiring—from both the ruling United Russia party and the in-system opposition. It seems likely the Kremlin will then seek to roll out this approach for nationwide parliamentary elections in 2026.
The 2019 Moscow City Duma elections caused a major headache for City Hall. When the Election Commission refused to register several famous opposition politicians as candidates, tens of thousands of Muscovites took to the streets in protest. In the end, twenty of the forty-five deputies elected to the Moscow City Duma in single-mandate districts were endorsed by opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Smart Voting system (a tool designed to maximize damage to United Russia). And several deputies elected that year were full-throated critics of City Hall, voting repeatedly against official initiatives.
The candidates put forward by United Russia for September elections are similar to 2019: loyal, easily manageable, and little known to voters. They include existing deputies, state employees, and some sportspeople. The most famous names are cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, and Rodion Gazmanov, the son of a famous Soviet-era pop singer (no one seems bothered that these men are almost totally unknown as politicians). Meanwhile, to sustain the illusion of pluralism, there will be a quota for in-system opposition candidates, including those from the Communist Party, the centrist New People, and the extreme nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR).
From the Kremlin to municipalities, the Russian authorities long ago learnt how to block dangerous election candidates. Even so, these filters are becoming even harder to slip through. For example, those designated as “foreign agents” are now forbidden from standing in elections, which means popular Moscow City Duma deputies Mikhail Timonov, Daria Besedina, and Yevgeny Stupin will not be able to run again.
Another filter is the administrative offence of “displaying extremist symbols,” which can be punished by the suspension of voting rights. The list of such symbols is long, and includes the logotype of Navalny’s organization. And it is the reason why Communist candidates Dmitry Saraev and Igor Sukhanov, and a candidate from the liberal Yabloko party, Vladimir Kalinin, have already been banned from standing.
However, all these tricks are nothing compared to City Hall’s major new weapon: universal electronic voting. In the 2019 Moscow elections, electronic voting was still being rolled out, and was only used in three districts. This time around, electronic voting will predominate. Russia’s Central Election Commission has allowed regional commissions to determine the rules and parameters of electronic voting in their areas, and this means Moscow has the power to try and dispense with paper ballots altogether.
A key role in this process will be played by electronic voting terminals. In previous Moscow elections, polling station staff encouraged voters to use these electronic terminals rather than fill out paper ballots. And this appears to have been very successful—electronic terminals avoid the issue of a widespread reluctance to enter personal details online (voters worry about being targeted by scammers).
The popularity of electronic terminals means the Moscow authorities are able to relegate paper ballots to a secondary role. Now, in order to vote with a paper ballot in September, you must submit a special application in advance (on polling day, the Election Commission will only issue paper ballots for “good reasons”). To vote with the electronic terminals, however, all you have to do is turn up.
Unquestionably, electronic voting helps to falsify elections. The old, paper-based system could successfully deliver victories for United Russia, but it was less adept at ensuring the election of unremarkable in-system opposition candidates. Now, electronic voting will help deliver the votes required for such candidates to win office.
Electronic voting also makes it easier to mobilize the electorate, and increase turnout (something the Kremlin is always seeking). To vote via electronic terminals, you need to scan your passport, while online voting happens through the Gosuslugi portal, which means that the heads of state-owned companies, and other loyal businesspeople, can potentially monitor how their employees vote in real time. Even if this capability doesn’t yet exist, the prospect of such surveillance could be used to frighten staff into voting.
As long as the electronic voting experiment in Moscow is a success, it will be rolled out across Russia for the 2026 State Duma elections. The Kremlin will use it to iron out occasional “problems” that are still thrown up by national and regional elections.
For example, the last State Duma elections saw some in-system opposition candidates unexpectedly beat their United Russia rivals. And many Russian cities with over a million residents (Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk) returned less than 30 percent support for United Russia. Now, these problems can be “solved” by installing electronic voting terminals in places where United Russia traditionally polls badly. The results can then be falsified to ensure the desired outcome.
At the same time, electronic voting will allow the Kremlin to dispense with the services of local elites. The presidential administration can put forward faceless bureaucrats and party functionaries as candidates without worrying that they could be defeated. Any candidates they don’t want to see elected in single-mandate districts can be designated “foreign agents” or convicted of displaying “extremist” symbols.
Electronic voting will also mean that Russia’s party system, which faces a legitimacy crisis because of the unpopularity of in-system parties, can be preserved—by fraudulently boosting the number of votes in-system parties receive.
All this means that federal and regional parliaments will be even more pliant than they are today. And election turnout figures will continue to rise. There’s only one drawback. If Russia experiences a period of political turbulence, this sort of virtual electoral system could collapse overnight. The deputies elected via electronic voting won’t be able to influence their “voters,” who don’t know who they are, and don’t ascribe them any authority. Officials in the Kremlin, however, prefer not to think about such scenarios.
