How GAS “Vybory” 2.0 Works — the New System Being Used for Russia’s Federal Elections for the First Time

Forwarded From Important Stories

How GAS “Vybory” 2.0 works — the new system being used for Russia’s federal elections for the first time. An investigation by “Important Stories”

Ahead of the State Duma elections, hackers penetrated the infrastructure of Tsifrotekh, the developer of GAS “Vybory” 2.0. The documents they obtained were passed to “Important Stories.” We studied almost 200 gigabytes of technical documentation, internal correspondence, and developers’ calls, and together with independent experts figured out how the new system works and what vulnerabilities remain in it.

The Central Election Commission called GAS “Vybory” 2.0 a “complex work of art” and its “favorite child.” From 2019 to 2025, the state spent at least 20.5 billion rubles on its development. But in early 2025, the system was effectively not ready, Tsifrotekh executives admitted: developers had identified about seven thousand issues, around 500 of them critical.

During the single voting day in 2025, the system suffered failures, according to internal calls among developers. Employees had to fix problems urgently and effectively live at work. And just a few weeks before the 2026 elections, dozens of bug-fix requests still remained in the system: it showed the percentage of election commissions that had reported at above 100%, made mistakes in determining winners in multi-member districts and in generating protocols, and included dead people on voter lists.

In the leak, “Important Stories” found data on 111.3 million voters — with names, dates of birth, registration addresses, and precinct numbers. We compared them with civil registry data on death registrations since 2022 and found that GAS “Vybory” 2.0 data listed at least 104,000 people recognized as deceased in occupied territories, including Crimea, as well as in Kursk and Bryansk regions.

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The CEC’s “Favorite Child”

What we learned from internal documents of the company that developed GAS “Vybory” 2.0 — the system being used for federal elections for the first time…