MOSCOW, March 18. /TASS/. An organization set up in Spain by a former lawyer from Russia sought to disrupt the operations of the Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) by submitting a flood of fake, invalid nuisance inquiries, CEC head Ella Pamfilova said.

"A former election lawyer from [the Russian region of] Udmurtia, together with a pro-American organization, established an entire network in Spain that has been operational for years. This little network initiated a stream of invalid fake inquiries, not even trying to formulate most of them even close to election violations, […] and our commissions were supposed to drown in them," Pamfilova noted.

According to the official, the presidential campaign is a "busy season" for the CEC and for all local election commissions across Russia, which already "receive people’s inquiries on various issues" as part of their ordinary duties.

"And then, a little network appears that turns into a whirlpool that commissions were supposed to drown in, so that they had no time for other things at all," Pamfilova noted.

Pamfilova stated that the participants in the organization are "perfectly aware" that Russian election legislation is "very strict."

"Even if we receive some completely crazy inquiry online, we have to reply to it. If, God forbid, we fail to reply fast and on time, they can file a lawsuit against us," Pamfilova added.

She noted that the CEC had to "tackle this problem, to let the commissions work on the real problems of the voters and to organize elections."

Russia held its first three-day presidential election over the period March 15-17. Remote electronic voting, also a first, was available to voters in 29, or about one-third, of the country’s regions. According to the CEC, after 99.43% of vote tally reports by local election commissions had been processed, incumbent head of state Vladimir Putin held a resounding lead over his three rivals with 87.32% of the vote.