Russian election officials announced Friday that the 2024 presidential race will be held over three days, the first time that multi-day voting has been used for a presidential election.
“Three-day voting is already becoming a tradition in our electoral system,” said Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) chairwoman Ella Pamfilova.
“It was first used during the [Covid-19] pandemic, but over time the majority of voters came to like the format because of its other advantages,” Pamfilova said.
Critics argue that extended voting periods make it easier to commit voter fraud, as it becomes harder for monitors and poll workers to do their jobs ensuring there are no irregularities, and ballot boxes are stored at polling stations overnight.
Russian senators on Thursday officially set March 17 as the date for next year’s presidential election, just in time for the legally mandated 100-day campaign period.
Vladimir Putin, who has been in power as either president or prime minister of Russia since 2000, is widely expected to announce his bid to run for a fifth term.
Russians first took part in a three-day vote in the 2020 constitutional referendum that allowed Putin to run for two additional presidential terms.
Pamfilova said in 2021 that three-day voting periods would “catch on.”
On Friday, the CEC also allowed voting in so-called “mobile polling stations” near residential buildings in four partially occupied Ukrainian territories and three Russian regions near the border with Ukraine, according to the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
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