How votes are manipulated for legislative proposals on the regulation.gov.ru website

Everything is gradually becoming digital — even state decisions now happen online. A person no longer needs to leave home; it is enough to press a “button” and obtain the required service or vote for a legislative initiative. Or for yet another official in an election!

At the same time, we are constantly told that this is safe, fair, and “guaranteed by the state.”

In our country there is a state portal, regulation.gov.ru, where agencies post normative legal acts — in other words, draft laws and various legislative decrees. For example, to clear-cut a protected forest, legalise exploitation of protected areas, or allow shooting animals on the brink of extinction. To any person this sounds like utter madness until you see such projects with your own eyes — it is genuinely hard to believe. Yet, unfortunately, it is precisely these kinds of “legislative initiatives” that our officials have been bringing forward one after another lately.

The scheme is very simple: officials or a group of lobbyists from a particular agency devise the draft law they need. They post it on the federal portal, after which the proposal must pass several stages of review, including public discussion. And, supposedly, during the public discussion people have the right to speak out for or against the project!

At the top of each initiative there is a possibility to cast a vote “FOR” or “AGAINST” (like and dislike); this is the visible part of public opinion. Separately, one can also send a complaint or suggestion to the authors of the initiative.

Until quite recently, when officials proposed environmentally dangerous bills, we managed to halt them. But lately the authors of the initiatives have resorted to outright public manipulation! In practice, tricking the electronic system turned out to be so easy that virtually anyone can do it.

The first draft law that they have practically pushed through so far was posted under number 155253 — it allows officials to legalise clear-cutting of protected mountain forests in order to build resorts. They failed to adopt the first version because of evident public dissatisfaction; we managed to stop them. Then they quietly duplicated the bill, and on the very last day of public discussion votes allegedly supporting the clear-cutting of mountain forests suddenly began to appear. Our allies recorded almost five thousand “FOR” votes within a few hours.

We raised a scandal, wrote to law-enforcement agencies and ministries — the manipulations were obvious. And we wrote not only after the public discussion but during it as well; absolutely everyone refused to respond. It went as far as the Investigative Committee forwarding the complaint to the Prosecutor General’s Office, which then passed it back to the very authors of the draft law. In other words, the people accused of technical manipulation were entrusted with answering society about the possible manipulation.

You understood correctly. Imagine this situation: you are walking down the street and a crowd of armed drunk people beats you up. You call the police, file a complaint, and your complaint is physically handed to those who beat you with the words, “they’ll explain everything to you themselves.”

How do you like such “work” of the system apparatus?

Alas.

After the public scandal the officials from the Ministry of Natural Resources realised their mistake and in the next draft law… started to “wind up” votes gradually, imitating real activity. At the same time we understand perfectly the scale of work required — how large a media campaign must be for several thousand people to actually visit the state portal, register, and cast their vote. We found no evidence that people anywhere on social networks were truly going to vote for the destruction of a protected forest.

Draft law 157501, which legalises building a huge highway straight through the ancient forest of Losiny Ostrov National Park within Moscow Region, sparked a sharply negative public reaction. Yet after launching public engagement, more than two thousand votes allegedly supporting the destruction of the ancient forest also appeared on the project page in just one day.

People report that the votes appear in waves, literally within a short time. At the same time, no media campaigns are being run on social networks; therefore, in our view we are witnessing yet another technical manipulation.

It is very simple: once the number of “FOR” votes becomes larger, officials can push the bill through as the “will of society” — after all, people themselves allegedly wanted the forest to be destroyed.

But how is it possible that on the state portal of legislative initiatives one can brazenly wind up votes? What about the security systems, honesty, and transparency that were promised to us? We were told openly that there was no need to worry about digitalisation, that it would be better and fairer. Right?

We studied the market for “vote winding” to understand how and for what money this can be done. For how much is a legislative decision sold, or how much does it cost to buy the legalisation of the next law?

I should mention here that when we demanded explanations from the Ministry of Economic Development — incidentally, the author of the draft law on clear-cutting mountain forests — we received an answer claiming that identification is strictly verified and any winding up is impossible.

SO.

First.

On the state initiatives site it is possible to register using an ordinary email address. In the registration form this function is absent in the mobile version but available from a computer! It all looks as though a loophole has been left SPECIFICALLY to enable vote winding.

The fact is that such manipulations (vote winding) usually occur precisely from computers. A simple “autoclicker” code generates this — it is a script to indicate where to click the mouse on the screen to automate actions. The script then, from different emails called “autoreg” accounts, simply performs the same actions of registering on the portal and voting for draft laws.

Automated services usually connect anticaptcha and proxies in such cases, to change the device’s location.

Second.

We studied the offer market. As a rule, services that provide such “services” on the internet advertise themselves as “vote winding for contests.” And indeed, how does voting for a draft law differ from a banal online contest? You register — you vote. That is all. No identification and no protection from bots.

The average price for such a service is about 5–7 rubles per vote. On the niche market there are offers of 2–3 rubles when ordering “large packages.”

Moreover, you can choose from numerous settings, set your own parameters, and even select a delay between registrations to create an imitation of real actions.

Both ads on Avito and fully legal entire services abound with such offers, where you can place an order yourself from a personal account.

Thus, for only 5–7 thousand rubles you can provide an influx of a thousand votes allegedly from real people in support of any legislative initiative.

WE MUST TELL THE TRUTH.

We will never use such methods in our struggle, even fully aware that it is possible. And we will never stoop to the level of those who, for their selfish interests, are ready to tear our Motherland apart.

I want everyone to know and understand how easy it is to manipulate on the state initiatives site. And our task today is to make this problem VISIBLE.

One draft law has already been almost adopted; very soon they will carry out CLEAR-CUTTING OF PROTECTIVE-CATEGORY FORESTS in the country’s mountain ecosystems. And we have seen manipulations; we perfectly understand and know what methods the authors of such initiatives resort to.

And now the same thing is happening with a draft law by which officials want to legalise the construction of a road right through a protected forest! We are talking about Moscow and Moscow Region, where very few forests remain, and Losiny Ostrov National Park is one of the last refuges of wildlife.

I believe we must launch a public civic initiative demanding that the authorities close the possibility of participating in voting on draft laws without identification. We need to contact our allies in the government, in the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, and try to ensure that not only is this “loophole” eliminated, but that real measures for transparency and publicity of any proposed initiatives are provided.

Apparently, no one will take care of this except us — ordinary people who sincerely love their Motherland! And meanwhile, right before our eyes, using the digital portal, someone is brazenly tearing the country’s protected heritage apart.

Mandatory for study: 

• How to vote against the draft law on destroying forests in the “Losiny Ostrov” National Park
• The Ministry of Economic Development denies vote manipulation in the draft law on clear-cutting mountain forests

© PAVEL PASHKOV