Ella Pamfilova explained why it was necessary to change the scheme of access to video surveillance at the elections
On Thursday, August 5, the Central Election Commission held an online meeting dedicated to a new scheme for organizing video surveillance of voting in the autumn Duma elections. All regional election commissions, representatives of 14 parties, the Public Chamber, public election observation centers in the regions, the Ministry of Finance, Rostelecom PJSC and the media took part in the event, mainly via videoconference.
Photo: Natalia Muschinkina
The obvious purpose of the event was to explain to the general public and the media the decisions on the organization of video surveillance that the CEC adopted in mid-July. Ella Pamfilova, her deputies and representatives of departments and organizations involved in the new scheme, explained to all doubters why it was necessary to change everything, and how the new scheme provides access to video surveillance for everyone who needs it.
The chairman of the CEC was clearly convinced by herself that there were enough incredulous people who met innovations: her speech contained many quotes from media speeches in which the purpose of innovations was somehow announced to restrict access to broadcast channels. However, Ella Pamfilova found worthy answers to all the theses of critics.
First of all, defending the chosen option of organizing access to broadcasts, Ella Pamfilova drew the audience’s attention to the fact that the CEC funds under the relevant article were allocated long before the pandemic and other unforeseen events, and no one assumed that the voting would take three days. As a result, the agency was forced to solve a dilemma: to provide a broadcast of the last day of voting on the previousthe scheme, or all three according to some new one, including the corresponding financial capabilities. We decided to support the second option, including in order to avoid subsequent accusations that “you did everything in two days, cleaned up, and on the third you show us a picture.” The broadcast will go on continuously for about 72 hours (at least 90, the representative of the Ministry of Finance corrected, because it will begin in technical mode on September 16).
According to the chairman of the CEC, this year video surveillance in terms of coverage of polling stations and voting voters will surpass not only the last Duma elections of 2016 (polling stations where 35% of voters vote), but also the “reference” presidential elections of 2018 from this point of view (95% of voters) – coverage this time will be even higher, about 98%.
The most important innovation that the CEC proposed in July is that now, in order to get access to the video broadcast, you will need to get access to a special service portal of the CEC. This access will be mandatory for the structures of the Central Election Commission system, parties with their regional branches, monitoring centers, public chambers,the candidates are single-mandate candidates. According to Ella Pamfilova, in the time remaining before the vote, at the request of election participants, the quotas of accounts can be increased, for this it is necessary to submit a reasoned application. For self-representing observers, access to broadcasts is not closed – it can be obtained through the “access points” of public observation centers and public chambers.
According to Ella Pamfilova, the reasons why videos from polling stations and commissions will no longer be simply sent to the Internet are practical, among other things: according to the CEC, only a few real complaints are received from observers “contemplating from the sofa”, so the new system is tailored for professional election participants. The deputy chairman of the CEC, Nikolai Bulaev, added that the new scheme implies not only some restriction of access to video, but also the creation of a system of “mass professional expertise”, when the observer’s request is immediatelyyou can send it to the headquarters of the corresponding party, the TEC or the monitoring center and get a prompt response to it. At the same time, a new option will be available to all observers with the new organization of the broadcast – “rewind the recording back” for a more careful study of it. The recordings themselves will be stored in the operational archive for three months after the election, so that it is easy for election participants to use them to compile appeals, while the entire array of recordings from all cameras (among them there will be just registrattrs who do not broadcast) will be preserved for a year.
The representatives of the parties participating in the meeting as a whole did not express any objections to the new scheme. The only exception was the representative of Yabloko, who proposed to increase the rank of parties in the hierarchy of structures that issue accounts for working with the service portal. To this end, he received assurances from the leadership of the observation centers that in case of a lack of access for the party or its individual observer, they can promptly provide it.