Moscow City Duma deputy cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev may become the first parliamentarian to discuss and vote for bills from space. This possibility was announced on Thursday at the session of the Moscow Urban Forum by the Chairman of the Moscow City Duma Alexei Shaposhnikov. “MK” contacted the cosmonaut himself, and he told how it would be possible to combine his work in the Duma with space flight.
“The Moscow City Duma has switched to digital remote work, while maintaining all the regulations necessary to carry out the complex procedure for adopting laws <...> I do not exclude that already in this convocation one of the deputies, <...> he is an astronaut with us, is a backup crew <...> this will be the first deputy to vote in parliament from near-earth orbit, ”TASS quotes Shaposhnikov as saying.
Voting from orbit was carried out earlier, though it was connected only with the presidential elections in the country. According to Oleg Artemyev, who participated in such an event, on election day he called the Earth on a dedicated connection to his authorized representative (this was one of the employees of the Cosmonaut Training Center), who filled out a ballot for him and threw it into a special ballot box. Now the proxy option will not work. After all, the cosmonaut-deputy will have to discuss all agenda items on his own behalf and put his signature under each of them personally.
There are cases in the Duma when deputies vote remotely. They get acquainted with the agenda of the meeting in advance, put their signatures and pass them on to colleagues in the faction, – says Artemyev. – Back in 2019, I warned my colleagues that during my flight to the ISS, there may be a problem with the discussion and voting for bills. To resolve this issue, I suggested, as an option, an electronic signature, which I will transmit remotely from space to Earth. Since this is a change in regulation, the legal service began to study the issue two years ago. In my opinion, there has not yet been a vote on its adoption.
If Artemiev’s idea with an electronic signature from orbit is accepted, then if he is put on flight during the period of his work in the Duma, his participation in the earth meeting will be as follows. 4-5 days before the meeting (usually they are held on Wednesdays) Oleg will be sent the agenda items into orbit. For each remotely, he will have to give his comments, expressing his consent or disagreement and securing all this with his electronic signature.
None of the cosmonauts have ever used an electronic signature while on the space station, ”explains Oleg.
“Will you have an opportunity in orbit to get acquainted with the opinion of colleagues in the faction on a particular issue in advance?” I ask the astronaut.
Of course, electronic messages are available to us in space. Another thing is that when making a decision, my answer may still not coincide with the opinion of the majority. This happens quite often in our country, and I consider it normal, since everyone should express their opinion, first of all, in the interests of the voters.
Now Oleg Artemyev is preparing to become an understudy of Anton Shkaplerov, who will fly as the spacecraft commander into space in October this year. It can go on a real flight as early as 2022. However, according to him, before that he will have to go through three more medical commissions.
Alexey Shaposhnikov, Chairman of the Moscow City Duma:
– I’ll start with the background. We are indebted to the coronavirus by introducing a system for remote discussion of bills and voting in the Moscow City Duma. As you know, the pandemic did not allow the deputies to hold meetings in the traditional face-to-face format in the building of the capital’s parliament, and the need to pass laws and resolve pressing issues is not something that has not disappeared anywhere, but, on the contrary, has become aggravated due to a difficult epidemiological situation.
To keep the work going, special software was developed. The developers have combined the video conferencing and information management systems of the Moscow City Duma. This allowed us to conduct meetings remotely, in full compliance with the law and regulations of the capital’s parliament. Over the period of two legislative sessions, the system has shown itself to be successful. It allows you to work from almost anywhere in the world where there is an Internet connection.
For the reasons described above, our system is fundamentally different from the one that was used to vote astronauts from orbit at the presidential elections in the Russian Federation in 2018. As you know, the astronauts keep in touch with the Mission Control Center. To ensure the voting procedure, each of them pre-selects a proxy and informs him of his / her will at the appointed time. In turn, the authorized person enters the data into the ballot and sends the anonymous ballot to the ballot box.
The main difference of our system is that no authorized persons are used. Using a closed communication channel, the deputy enters the application using his personal password, informs with his own voice about his decision on a particular voting issue, and the program directly sends the data to the information management system of the Moscow City Duma. Moreover, all actions are carried out by the deputy personally, and his vote is anonymous, as provided by law.
Let me emphasize that our system was not created specifically to organize remote voting of deputies from space. But today it allows it. And if one of the Moscow City Duma deputies – and among the parliamentarians there really is a deputy who is an active cosmonaut and is a member of the ISS backup crew – is lucky enough to go into orbit, we have all the technological capabilities to carry out this procedure for the first time in history.
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