Open Voter Lists as a Guarantee of Equal Suffrage and Non-Distortion of Election Results: Experience of CIS Member States

The article gives a constitutional legal and organizational and technical assessment of the concept of open voter lists in the scope of the national legislations of the CIS member states, as well as issues of its practical implementation. Theoretical and practical objections to the opening of voter lists in the Russian Federation are analyzed. The author considers the exclusion of the "double count" of voters with active suffrage and the exclusion of the opportunity to vote for voters for various third parties to be the two key aspects of the implementation of the principle of equal suffrage. Both require a thorough development of the regulatory, organizational and technical base for voter lists: their compilation, clarification, amendment, disclosure of them for all participants in the electoral process. The recent legislative changes in Armenia, which provide for the publication of signed voter lists on the Internet, as well as the more established practice of open electronic lists and biometric identification of voters in Kyrgyzstan, are considered. This practice is compared with the issues that arise in the implementation of the "Mobile voter" mechanism, and other problems of ensuring the principle of equal suffrage in the Russian Federation. The author substantiates the position on the priority of the norms of the legislation on elections and referendums in relation to the legislation on personal data and concludes that it is necessary to extend the successful experience of Armenia and Kyrgyzstan to other CIS member states, including the Russian Federation. As conclusions, proposals are formulated to improve the legislation of the Russian Federation on elections and referendums, providing for the complete opening of voter lists both before and after voting day with the possibility of mass automated data processing. It is proposed to simplify and fully automate the "Mobile voter" mechanism, eliminating the risk of the human factor from this process.