RIO DE JANEIRO, July 6 (Itar-Tass) — Brazil plans to borrow Russia’s experience of installing web cameras at polling stations to monitor elections online, the chairman of the Russian central election commission, Vladimir Churov, who is visiting Rio de Janeiro, said in an interview with Itar-Tass on Friday.
“Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court plans to thoroughly study our experience that is just now the world’s only one,” he said.
“Brazil’s election system in many respects is unique one, it is very good financed and over 90 percent of citizens trust it,” Churov said.
He emphasized that in the group of the BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, “Brazil and India’s elections systems outstrip any European one.”
The central election commission’s delegation led by Vladimir Churov held talks with the authorities of Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court. Within the framework of the cooperation agreement signed between Russia’s central election commission and Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court the two countries exchanged observers at the federal elections.
During this visit to Brazil “the CEC and the Superior Electoral Court reached agreements to set up joint working groups to compare the two countries’ legislations concerning the rights of disabled persons, practice of financial control over political parties and election funds, comparative tests of e-voting systems and training of members of district election commissions.
“Brazil introduced a 100 percent e-voting, while Russia will fully switch to this system in two years,” Churov said adding that the two countries’ voting equipment differs from each other.
“Brazilians use touch button voting machines and do not use paper ballot papers and their scanning. We agreed that we will study and compare what system is more convenient in use,” he said.
At the same time Churov described the voting system for foreign citizens “too bureaucratized.” “If we’ve asked to fill in such a number of papers, we probably would be unable to ensure the ballot casting at foreign polling stations for 450,000 Russians,” he said.
“The next meeting with Brazilian counterparts will take place at the end of March 2013 in Moscow,” he said adding that it will focus on comparative analysis of the two countries’ e-voting equipment.