By Maria Tsvetkova

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A coalition of defeated parliamentary candidates in Moscow who allege they were cheated of victory in a parliamentary election by a crooked online voting system said on Thursday they would try to overturn the results via lawsuits and public pressure.

After eight seats that had belonged to Communists were suddenly won by the United Russia party, many of those who lost have called for voters to rally in Moscow Saturday.

Official interim results show that United Russia, which is a supporter of President Vladimir Putin, has won a larger than anticipated parliamentary majority.

Authorities have declared Saturday’s scheduled meeting illegal because of restrictions placed on COVID-19-related public events.

On Friday, the central electoral commission will officially approve the election results. It has already stated that the voting process was extremely clean and transparent. According to the Kremlin, the election was fair and open.

The defeated candidates made a Facebook statement (NASDAQ:) Thursday requesting that the authorities annul the Moscow results and abandon electronic voting for future elections.

The statement stated that millions of votes were stolen from citizens of the country between Sept. 17-19, when the election was held. We, candidates of various political parties, formed a committee in order to cancel the electronic voting results.

It was signed, among other things by candidates for the Communist party and those from liberal Yabloko. Two said that officers had visited their homes in order to inform them about possible dangers of disrupting public order.

According to the statement, plans were made for a national protest against the outcome they believe was rigged. There was no specific date mentioned.

‘BLACK BOX’

Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny had advised people to vote for some of the defeated candidates in a tactical voting campaign designed to try to thwart United Russia.

Russian election officials who argued for online voting on the basis of transparent, blockchain-based technology deny that any fraud was committed.

The Russian election officials see online voting as an achievement that could be scaled up ahead of the next presidential election, 2024.

Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson said that the practice should be used as wide as possible.

Critics said online voting was a “black box”, with limited access to data for even election officials in Moscow.

Three election commissioners who were responsible for organizing the Moscow online voting said to Reuters that the laptops used for tracking the process had been cut off by the system just before it started the count.

The delay in the announcement of the result raised suspicions.

Anna Lobonok (a member of the Communist party’s election commission), stated that the results eventually arrived in PDF-files and had no indications they were related to real voting.

“I didn’t understand the source of these figures,” she stated, noting that technical specialists from a Moscow government department created the online voting platform.

Lobonok requested that online voting results not be annulled.

An online monitoring site for the voting process was also shut down. The website stopped updating data after decryption at night.