Russian prisoners cast their votes in parliamentary elections

Russian prisoners cast their votes in parliamentary elections

Topic: Russian State Duma Elections (2011)

MOSCOW, December 4 (RIA Novosti)

Approximately 90% of Russia’s inmates serving time in the country’s penitentiaries have cast their ballots in the parliamentary elections, NTV news channel said on Sunday.

With only five hours remaining until polls close in Russia’s westernmost time zone in the exclave of Kaliningrad, 25.4% of eligible voters have cast their ballots. The Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk has just closed its polls.

NTV also reported that prisoners are casting their votes according to a strict time schedule and that none of the prisoners so far have declined to vote.

The first preliminary results of the lower house of parliament’s elections will be announced shortly after 9:00 p.m. Moscow time [GMT 04:00]. The first official preliminary results will be announced in the early hours of Monday.

At 4am GMT voting began in Moscow and in most of European Russia, while Far Eastern and Siberian regions have already presented reports about the first hours of the vote, that show that turnout was generally lower than in the previous elections in 2007.

More than 7,000 journalists, including 389 foreign reporters, from 4,000 media are covering the elections, the Central Election Commission said.

Voting violations have been registered throughout the country, though the Central Election Commission has not confirmed any of them. Police have launched more than 200 administrative investigations on violations.

All of Russia's seven legally-registered political parties are competing for representation in the Duma election but pollsters have predicted that only the four incumbents, United Russia, A Just Russia, the Communists and the Liberal Democratic Party, will find enough support to win seats.

Prisoners Vote Out of the Public Eye

Convicted prisoners are banned from voting, but suspects in pretrial detention are not. People in psychiatric facilities are also allowed to participate in elections unless they are ruled legally incompetent.