MOSCOW, September 18. /TASS/. Independent observers from four African countries – Algeria, Cameroon, Burundi and the Comoros – assessed the organization and conduct of voting on the first day of State Duma elections at a polling station in Moscow, reporting no problems, a TASS correspondent said.

The observers arrived at a polling station in Moscow’s Tverskoy district on the first day of voting and spent about an hour there. During that time, they looked at the overall organization of the process, the level of technical equipment at the polling station, as well as how clearly and without violations the voting process was being conducted.

In addition, Central Election Commission officials accompanying the foreign guests provided them with details about the parliamentary elections, explained the specifics of the electoral process and introduced the observers to Russia’s party system. The information provided at the polling station also allowed the foreign guests to learn about the candidates standing in Moscow’s central electoral district.

For many of the observers, however, this was not their first experience. The Comoros representative Houssam Eddine Daoud said he was attending elections in Moscow for the first time, but had previously served as an independent observer in South Africa and Venezuela. According to the Comorian observer, the electoral process in Russia is similar to the way voting is conducted in South Africa, while he noticed differences compared with Venezuela.

"In Venezuela the process takes place simultaneously in electronic and paper formats, meaning that one person votes in both formats, and then the results are compared. This is a significant difference from voting in Russia," the Comoros representative said. He stressed that during the first hour after the polling station opened, neither he nor his colleagues had noticed any difficulties, violations or problems, adding that, in their view, the voting process was running smoothly and without any complications.