Authors

Discussion

One of the innovations of the 2021 State Duma election in Russia was a pilot project to introduce remote e-voting in seven of the 85 regions. The increased use of technology followed earlier experiments in subnational elections, as well as online advisory voting systems that have been utilised in a federal city improvement programme across the country. On one account, Russia is following international trends and using technological tools to widen access to the political system. At the same time, opposition figures, assert that such technology also increases the risk of manipulation and suffers from a lack of transparency. Some of the opposition initially disputed results in constituencies where the electronic votes were a decisive proportion of the ballots cast. The paper examines non-traditional forms of voting in Russian elections, and assesses their merits, role and future in the Russian electoral process.