We are not working on it today, no one has contacted us about it yet - Fedorov on online elections
First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov says that the department has not done anything to prepare for the elections in an online format so far, because there are no legal grounds to deal with this issue.
"This is a complex issue. Given that a full-scale cyber war is taking place, there are risks of influence, at least by the information Russians, on the process itself. Elections are always about trust, even offline elections are always about trust, whether people trust the election results or not, whether they trust the Central Election Commission (CEC) or not, whether they trust the counting or not. Therefore, first of all, it depends on whether people have trust in holding elections online," Fedorov said in an interview on the national telethon on Tuesday, answering the question of whether it is possible to hold elections in Ukraine completely online.
He also stressed that today there are no legal grounds to hold online elections, and for this, changes to the legislation are necessary, after which the system may be developed.
"We are not working on this today, but we are reading about it," he added, emphasizing that no one has contacted him about preparing online elections in Ukraine so far.
"We have not done anything in this direction and cannot do anything because we have no legal grounds to deal with this issue," Fedorov noted.
When asked whether it would be possible to hold such a vote if it were legally regulated, the First Deputy Prime Minister said that he would gather the best technology companies in the world, involve Estonia as a country with such successful experience, and then conduct research to see if it was possible.
As reported, on December 18, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he had always been a supporter of online voting, but that he did not yet have a consensus on this issue with the Verkhovna Rada.
In turn, Olha Aivazovska, the chairwoman of the board of the Civic Network OPORA and a member of the working group on preparing laws on holding elections during the war, believes that elections should not be part of a peace agreement. She also criticized talk of online voting in the elections.