Institutional changes and technological trends in the electoral system of the Russian Federation: a comparative analysis of electoral cycles 2018–2025

The purpose of the article is to study the main directions of transformation of electoral technologies in the Russian Federation during the electoral cycles of 2018-2025. Special attention is paid to remote electronic voting, multi-day voting, digital polling stations, mediatization of political campaigns, updating electoral legislation and changing the personnel and political context. The methodological basis of the research is a comprehensive political and legal approach, which made it possible to study and characterize electoral technologies simultaneously as elements of electoral practice, regulatory regulation and political communication. The research also used methods such as comparative analysis to compare traditional and digital forms of expression, assessment of various stages of the introduction of electronic tools in Russia, formal and legal analysis, which allowed us to consider changes in federal electoral legislation and their impact on the establishment of new voting procedures, historical and institutional analysis., with the help of which it was possible to trace the sequence of development of electoral technologies from electronic voting complexes and digital polling stations to remote electronic voting and a multi-day format of expression of will. The study shows that the modernization of the electoral process in the period under review is not fragmented, but systemic in nature: digital tools gradually cover different stages of elections, from informing and mobilizing voters to procedures for expressing will and counting votes. At the same time, the technological complexity of elections increases the importance of public control, legal detail, information openness and overcoming digital inequality. It is concluded that by 2025, the Russian electoral system has switched to a hybrid model in which traditional forms of voting are preserved, but increasingly complemented by digital services and administrative and technological mechanisms for managing the electoral process. The theoretical and at the same time practical significance of the research is to study the features of institutional changes and technological trends in the domestic electoral system in the period 2018-2025, which allows us to identify the key advantages and disadvantages of various electoral concepts and propose a strategy for their transformation for the most effective application during the next electoral cycles.