The Tagansky District Court in Moscow has just issued a final ruling to completely block Smart Voting — a system that can defeat candidates from United Russia if it is launched and reaches a sufficient scale.
The decision is completely unlawful — we even removed the collection of personal data from the website — but entirely expected.
It was clear from Roskomnadzor’s actions that the whole process would turn into a farce.
Look, this is their amended lawsuit. They are blocking our website by suing some company called Gandi SAS — the owner of the .vote domain zone, based in France, which knows nothing about the lawsuit or even about the existence of something called Roskomnadzor.
And the funniest part is the main reason for the block: violation of personal and family privacy.
Whaaat?! How does urging people to vote for a particular candidate, thereby reducing a United Russia candidate’s chances of winning, violate anyone’s private life or family privacy?
Roskomnadzor, evidently, described its complaint not in legal terms but in essence: we, the people in power, are a family, a close-knit circle. And if you manage to get candidates from other parties elected, you will start asking too many questions about our property and money. That would violate our family privacy.
Let me stress once again: these frantic blocking attempts show that the Kremlin is afraid of Smart Voting.
That means people need to take part. Sign up right now. For now, we’ll have to use VPNs and various proxies, but we will find a technical way to solve the problem.
And one more thing: listen to my podcast on this topic. It’s the first podcast I’ve ever recorded!