Bloggers are being offered money to promote online voting in elections. Orders come from contractors of the Moscow mayor’s office

Organizations affiliated with the Moscow government offer money to popular bloggers to campaign for electronic voting. Two independent sources told The Insider.

Bloggers are offered to make a photo post about electronic voting without campaigning for any party. In the post, it is necessary to talk about the fact that online voting exists in principle, as well as about its “pluses”, including “safety” and “time saving”. Bloggers are also invited to post instructions on how to “vote online and not go anywhere.”

In addition, bloggers who agree to cooperate will need to be reminded of the voting day “two or three days before the elections”. Also, such posts should be scheduled directly on election day. As an illustration for the post, a neutral photo is offered: a selfie against the backdrop of views of Moscow, at home with children and “something like that.”

The campaign organizers, which turned out to be independent commercial organizations, offer bloggers to independently determine the cost of the service. As It became known to The Insider, prices go up to 120 thousand rubles per iteration for bloggers with 15-20 thousand followers on Instagram.

The campaign involves various communication agencies that previously carried out orders from the Moscow government. The Insider has screenshots of the correspondence, but cannot name the agencies, since they were asked about this by sources who expect to continue working with the authorities on other projects. According to sources, earlier the same companies implemented projects for the Moscow government, in particular, for the Moscow Department of Information Technology, the Department of Cultural Heritage and the Department of Urban Development Policy.

It is noteworthy that the bloggers received money by transferring to the card, and the mentioned companies were not noticed in official tenders. In both cases, which became known to The Insider, the producers of the information campaign asked not to tell anyone about the conversation on the topic of campaigning for online voting.

The Russian, and especially the Moscow authorities, have previously actively urged citizens to vote online, spending large budgets on it. Thus, in Moscow and many other cities, apartments and cars are raffled off among those registered in the electronic voting system.

At the same time, as before reported The Insider, there is no protection in the electronic voting system that would ensure the secrecy of expression of will and vote counting without falsification – the developers and administrators of the system have the opportunity to find out who voted how.