State Duma and regional elections start rolling through Russia

MOSCOW. KAZINFORM - Russia has started electing the 7th State Duma (lower house of parliament), as the first polling stations opened in the easternmost Kamchatka and Chukchi peninsulas at 08:00 on Sunday (23:00 Moscow time), when it was still late Saturday evening in the country's western areas, TASS reports.

One hour later, at midnight Moscow time, elections will begin for the voters in the Magadan and Sakhalin regions and the eastern districts of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), and in another hour, in the Khabarovsk and Primorye territories, the Jewish Autonomous Region and the central part of Yakutia. At two past midnight Moscow time the voting will get underway in the Trans-Baikal Territory, the Amur Region and Western districts of Yakutia, including the republican center Yakutsk. One hour after that the polling places in Buryatia and the Irkutsk Region will open their doors.

At 04:00 Moscow time the republics of Altai, Tyva, and Khakassia, the Altai and Krasnoyarsk territories and the Kemerovo, Novosibirsk and Tomsk regions will join in. The Omsk region will be next in line. In another 60 minutes, when it will be 06:00 in Moscow, ballots will begin to be cast in Bashkortostan, the Perm Territory, the Kurgan, Orenburg, Sverdlovsk, Tyumen and Chelyabinsk Regions and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area-Yugra and the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area.

One hour before the voting starts in Moscow the electorate of Udmurtia, and Astrakhan, Samara and Ulyanovsk regions will have a chance to express their will.

Moscow will be voting simultaneously with central Russia, Crimea, the North Caucasus, the Volga River area, St. Petersburg, Murmansk and Karelia.

The last polling stations in the west will close at 21:00, when people in the east will already be waking up to meet the new day - Monday, September 19.

For those Russian citizens who are far away from home the voting will proceed much longer. In the Americas, the last ones to drop their ballots in the boxes will be compatriots in San Francisco and Vancouver.

Photo: © Alexandr Ryumin/TASS

Read more