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About 110 million people in the country have the right to elect the new State Duma, which has 450 members.
President Vladimir Putin has been supporting “United Russia” before the elections for two decades.
This time, the parliamentary elections are held over three days. Authorities have decided to do so to curb the spread of COVID-19, and opposition representatives say this will only increase the chances of voter fraud. During the first two days of voting, there were reports of a wide range of irregularities, cases of fraud, and coercive votes.
Also, this time the Russians can cast their votes online, as Putin himself did. Online votes are expected to be counted very soon after polling stations close.
While United Russia seeks to preserve its current absolute majority, the Communist Party also hopes to win a share of the vote due to growing public dissatisfaction with the Kremlin’s policies.
Representatives of the opposition were practically excluded from these parliamentary elections.
In Lithuania, there are three voting points in the Russian parliamentary elections
Russian citizens in Lithuania will be able to vote in the parliamentary elections on Sunday.
There are three polling stations in the country.
One of them will be in Vilnius, at the Russian Embassy in Lithuania.
In Klaipeda, the vote will take place at the Consulate General of Russia. The voting table was also installed in the Visaginas Cultural Center.
Currently there are about 14 thousand people in Lithuania. Russian citizens with the right to vote, BNS informed the Russian embassy.
TASS: In the first two days of the Duma election, the vote rose to more than 31 percent. Russian
According to the Central Election Commission, voter turnout in the Russian parliamentary elections on Saturday at 8 pm Moscow time stood at 31.51 percent. This number does not include votes cast online.
Elections to the 450 members of the Russian State Duma (lower house), which has 450 members, will end this Sunday, September 19.
This time, there were up to three days to express political will for the coronavirus pandemic, with September 17 added to the main election day. and September 18.
In addition to members of parliament, Russian citizens will also elect the leaders of the country’s nine regions (in three other regions, local legislators will elect their leaders) and members of 39 regional parliaments.
Putin’s party is expected to have a majority in the country’s parliament.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s party is expected to retain a majority in parliament after three days of general elections ending on Sunday, as most of the Kremlin’s critics have been banned from voting.
The election is taking place this year and the authorities are cracking down on the opposition without precedent. The most prominent critic of the Russian government, Alexei Navaln, is currently in prison and his organization has been banned for being “extremist”.
Before this weekend’s elections, all of Navaln’s main allies were arrested or abandoned, and anyone associated with his organization was unable to stand in parliamentary and local elections. Voting will end at 8pm on Sunday. local (and Lithuanian) time.
“It just came to our attention then. Basically, people have no other choice,” Vladimir Zakharov, a 43-year-old businessman from Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, told AFP.
Reports of censorship and widespread falsification of results also emerged during the elections.
Apple and Google provoke dissatisfaction with Russia’s opposition after removing Navaln’s “Smart Vote” device from their app stores, which tells supporters which candidates they should vote for to defeat Kremlin-related politicians.
Sources close to Google and Apple told AFP that the decision was made under pressure from Russian authorities, including threats to arrest local employees of tech giants.
Also late on Friday night, A. Navaln’s “Smart Voting” bot disappeared from the “Telegram” correspondence platform. And early Sunday morning, Google Docs and YouTube blocked documents and videos with lists of recommended candidates.
Navaln’s team said Google had previously complained about lawsuits from Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor. The team also quickly created new Google Docs and YouTube videos with shortlisting.
“We will see how soon Roskomnadzor makes a new request and YouTube complies,” the banned A. Navaln Anti-Corruption Foundation wrote on Twitter.
“Putin celebrates victory”
At the time, reports of election fraud and military patrols at polling stations were increasing on Russian social media.
Critics also say that online voting, new restrictions on the number of independent poll watchers and the fact that elections are held over three days create opportunities for massive falsification of results.
On Saturday afternoon, the independent electoral observation group Golos, which has recognized the government as a “foreign agent,” reported more than 2,750 electoral irregularities.
But Ela Pamfilova, president of the Central Election Commission, said the commission had received 137 reports on Saturday.
It is worth mentioning that before the elections to the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, Putin’s rating of the “United Russia” party reached historic lows. The latest data from the Russian state opinion voting center VTsIOM showed that less than 30 percent planned to vote for this party. Russians, which is at least ten percentage points less than before the last parliamentary elections in 2016.
Although 68-year-old Putin remains popular, the popularity of “United Russia” is declining, due in part to the decline in living standards in the country over several years caused by economic stagnation.
However, the ruling party is projected to maintain a two-thirds majority in the lower house of parliament, allowing it to make decisions without any resistance.
In addition to United Russia, 13 parties are running in the elections, but they are largely seen as a token opposition.
Navaln’s comrade Leonid Volkov said on Saturday that “V. Putin is celebrating a great victory” after the tech giants “succumbed to Kremlin blackmail. However, he continued to urge his followers to try to convert the joy of the Russian leader in “mourning”.
“In our fight between David and Power, we still have the opportunity to throw a stone,” he wrote on the Telegram platform.
