According to Important Stories, about 4,500 polling stations were already processing ballots at an abnormally high speed on the first day of voting. On average across the country, about 20 ballots are counted per hour at one polling station, but at some stations up to 230 ballots per hour were recorded, that is, roughly four people per minute.
The largest number of such “fast” polling stations was found in Chechnya, North Ossetia, the Leningrad, Voronezh, Smolensk, and Ivanovo regions, as well as in Dagestan and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug. Voting in the State Duma elections in Russia takes place from September 18 to 20.
On the second day of voting, reports came in of widespread pressure on observers across the country. The Yabloko party, which opened a hotline for observers and voters, reported attacks on candidates, detentions and the blocking of observers from entering polling stations, the opening of safes with ballots, and coercion of citizens into electronic voting.
In Moscow, at more than 10 polling stations, voters were discouraged from using paper ballots and electronic voting was described as the “main” and “priority” method. There were also reports of voters being transported by bus, and some callers to the hotline complained that they found themselves on the lists of those who had voted, although they had not yet taken part in the election.
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation also reported violations: State Duma deputy Sergei Kazankov from this party published a video in which a member of the election commission in Mari El stuffed two bundles of ballots into the ballot box when observers left the room. By the evening of September 19, the whereabouts of State Duma candidate from the Greens party, Yulia Kuznetsova, who disappeared in Moscow on the evening of September 17, were still unknown.
The day before, she posted a video in which she said that she was fine, but supporters suggested that the clip had been recorded under pressure.
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