MOSCOW, September 20./TASS/. The official results of the Russian legislative elections will be summed up no earlier than Friday, so that the regions could have time to look into all complaints and appeals, the head of the Central Election Commission (CEC), Ella Pamfilova, said during a video linkup with President Vladimir Putin on Monday.
"We want to officially sum up the results no earlier than Friday. The reason is that I strongly recommended all our colleagues in the regions not to hurry, since apart from the State Duma campaign we had 4,400 different campaigns overall. The cleanness of this campaign is the most important thing of all," she said.
"Since we invested so much effort to ensure that the election campaign is clean, we would not want to see some negligent attitude damage the reputation of what we have done," she specified.
The CEC chairperson also noted "the smallest ever" number of appeals and complaints coming to the Central Election Commission. "Although the number of complaints, appeals and violations has reduced in essence, they all come to light. All that is kept secret very quickly comes to light, the system is now working towards this, it is impossible to hide anything. The fact that we had an unprecedented number of observers, over 491,000, also has its role," Pamfilova stressed.
Elections to the 8th Russian State Duma (lower house) were held over three days - on September 17, 18 and 19. In addition to the State Duma elections, voters went to the polls to cast ballots for the heads of nine Russian regions and in elections for 39 regional parliaments.