The Golos movement has developed a mobile application, which allows the users to verify accuracy of data encoding in the QR codes of the district election commission protocols, and to send the data to the SMS-CEC service of simultaneous ballot counting.
Beginning in 2017, the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation has been actively introducing QR-coding technology to the distric election commission protocols. The use of QR codes speeds up the input of data into the State Automated System Vybory, excluding technical errors in the process.
The mobile application’s first field trial will take place on July 2, when the voters of the Kostroma Region will cast their ballots in the by-election of the regional Duma deputy. The relevant voting district includes the whole territory of the town of Sharya, region’s second largest. The movement’s activists will exercise their right to citizens’ oversight at all 16 ballot stations.
“We’ve been using QR codes in our everyday life, such as in our interactions with retail, for a while now, but the use of QR codes during elections is a know-how for Russia. We created a mobile app so that the citizen observers and members of election commissions could always verify the accuracy of the program used to encode the protocol’s data into QR code and immediately send the data to SMS-CEC,” says co-chairman of Golos Grigory Melkonyants.
The second field test will be carried out on July 16, at the by-elections to the Yaroslavl Regional Duma.
Following the field trials, the mobile app will be made available for download and use on September 10, 2017, on the single voting day, when hundreds of elections will take place in Russia.
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