Voting in the Russian presidential election, which lasted from March 15 to 17, has concluded. For the first time, it was possible to participate online without visiting polling stations in almost a third of the country: in Moscow and 28 regions.
This is Russia's first experience of using DEG on such a scale. Furthermore, it is the world's first experience of remote electronic voting being applied so globally in a presidential election.
Muscovites voted on the city portal, while residents of the experimental regions voted on the federal portal. However, to vote this way, they needed to apply on "Gosuslugi" in advance and receive confirmation. Among the well-known figures who used DEG were independent candidate Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.
From the first day, the system was subjected to massive cyberattacks both in Moscow and at the federal level. All cyberattacks were repelled, Russian citizens' data was not lost or compromised, and the electoral process proceeded as usual.
According to the Ministry of Digital Development, the final voter turnout on the DEG platform was 94%. 4.4 million people used the remote voting system.
It turned out that 62% of voters who preferred not to go to polling stations and chose online voting were women, and 38% were men.
The most active users of DEG were voters aged 35-50, accounting for 42% of those who voted online. Online voters aged 18-35 were in second place, accounting for 33%. Among residents of the twenty-nine regions where DEG was available, those who chose it and were over 50 years old accounted for only 25%.
The innovation was most popular among residents of three regions. The following number of people voted on the DEG platform there:
- in the Moscow region — 799 thousand people;
- in the Rostov region — 352 thousand people;
- in the Sverdlovsk region — 291 thousand people.
The top 10 regions where DEG was actively used also included the Nizhny Novgorod region, the Altai Territory, the Novosibirsk region, Chuvashia, the Chelyabinsk region, the Perm Territory, and the Voronezh region.
