The second day of voting in the Russian presidential elections is taking place with fewer incidents although with less influx than on Friday, when participation exceeded a third of the census, according to official data.
All in all, more than half of Russians have already voted in the presidential elections, as reported on Saturday by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) when there are still several hours before the closing of the polls on the second day of voting. According to the CEC, 51.77% of Russians summoned to the polls exercised their right to vote, which includes electronic voting, highly criticized by the opposition for its opacity.
“I have come to vote for the future of Russia. And you know for whom,” an elegantly dressed woman of about 75 years old, who identified herself as a retired doctor and was wearing a mask due to her cold, told EFE without saying a word.
At voting center No. 72 in Moscow, the influx of citizens was much lower than the day before, when participation, including remote voting, was 34% of the census, estimated at 4,015 voters.
According to the president of the electoral commission of that center, Denís Bogutsi, just over half of the citizens used electronic voting, either remotely or at the fixed terminals of the voting center, while the rest chose to mark their option. on a traditional ballot and place it in the ballot box.
An older man approached to request that the commission bring a ballot box or a mobile electronic terminal to his home so that his wife, who was unable to go to the polling station for health reasons, could vote.
For approximately an hour, only about twenty people, almost all of them elderly, came to vote at the center, heavily guarded by the police.
In Moscow, where the majority of those registered vote electronically, almost four million people have fulfilled their constitutional duty. In several regions of the Far East and Siberia more than two-thirds of the electorate have already cast their ballots, while in the Ukrainian peninsula Crimea, which is celebrating ten years since Russian annexation, participation is close to 60%. The CEC welcomed the fact that neither incidents nor cyberattacks nor Ukrainian border incursions have prevented Russians from turning out en masse to vote in the eighth presidential elections in the history of this country since 1991.
While sociologists acknowledge that they did not expect such a high turnout, the opposition suspects that the authorities have resorted to administrative recourse when forcing public sector employees, the electoral breadbasket of the Kremlin candidate, Vladimir Putin, to vote.
“Thank God there have been no incidents and we hope there will not be any,” the vice president of electoral college No. 69, Gleb Stepanov, told EFE. As in the previous voting center, there were no observers delegated by the presidential candidates to supervise the development of the electoral process. A man in civilian clothes, in shirt sleeves and with a gun on his belt, reinforced police surveillance at the polling station.
This Friday, the president of the Central Electoral Commission (CEC), Ela Pamfílova, called for strengthening the security of voting centers after several incidents occurred, such as the pouring of ink into ballot boxes to spoil the ballots or the throwing of cocktails. Molotov. A woman was arrested for setting fire to the voting booth curtain.
These forms of protests are accompanied by the refusal to participate in elections, the results of which are known in advance.
“I have no intention of voting. It makes no sense. It is an absolute waste of time and would give some legitimacy to the elections,” Vladimir, a 45-year-old man, currently unemployed, told EFE.
He assures that more than twenty messages have already arrived on his cell phone inviting him to vote. “I have had to lie to my mother, a staunch Putinist, and tell her that I am going to vote so that she can stay calm,” he said.
