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Over 1 mln people take part in online voting on constitutional amendments

The voter turnout has hit 85%, according to the monitoring center, a TASS correspondent reported

MOSCOW, June 29. /TASS/. More than one million people have already taken part in the online voting on constitutional amendments, Ilya Massukh, chief of the public headquarters for control and monitoring of the nationwide voting in Moscow, said on Monday.

"The headquarters continue to work. It was operational over the weekend. We are keeping a close eye on the situation. More than one million people have taken part in the online voting. I don’t think we will have a 100% turnout. As for me, I want to vote in a traditional way, although I have registered for electronic voting. I want to see whether I will be identified [as having registered online] or not," he said.

"As of 14:00 Moscow time, nearly 886,500 voters received ballots and nearly 873,300 of them had cast their votes. Today is the last but one day of online voting," he added.

The voter turnout has hit 85%, according to the monitoring center, a TASS correspondent reported.

The online vote began on Thursday, June 25, at 10:00 a.m. Moscow time, in Moscow and the Nizhny Novgorod Region. The online voting will end in less than 30 hours, at 20:00 Moscow time on June 30.

Around one million voters in Moscow and some 140,000 in the Nizhny Novgorod Region have registered for taking part in the online voting.

Nationwide voting on constitutional amendments started in Russia on June 25. The official voting day under the presidential decree is July 1 but due to the coronavirus situation the voting period has been extended for a week, from June 25 through July 1. Vote counting will begin in regions after 20:00 local time on July 1, when polling stations close. Along with the extended voting period (from June 25 to July 1), people can cast their votes outside polling stations at specially organized voting areas, including outdoors, or use contactless voting at home or the Mobile Voter application. Additionally, residents of Moscow and the Nizhny Novgorod Region can vote online.