Tonight at 23:59 the electoral campaign will end officially. Until the closing of the voting centers on Sunday, 19:00, there will be a period of so-called “electoral silence,” in which no campaign activity may be undertaken by any of the parties or the media.
Voting centers all over the country will open on Sunday at 07:00 and will remain open until 19:00. Anyone who is standing in line at the time the voting center closes will have the right to cast their vote.
The voting centers will be managed by the Voting Center Commissions (KQV), many of which, as of yesterday, still had not been nominated or trained.
Besides the KQV, there will be observers from the different political parties present in the voting centers, as well as independent local and international observers from the Helsinki Committee, the OSCE-ODIHR mission, as well as observers from foreign embassies and the EU. Several news outlets have also recently received accreditation from the Central Election Commission (KQZ) to cover the elections.
As the voting lists are closed, voters can only vote for a specific party, but not for a specific candidate. There are 18 parties on the ballot, and the 140 parliamentary mandates will be allotted on the basis of a district system.
Each district is divided into several Election Administration Zones (ZAZ), which in turn supervise the Voting Centers (QV).
After the closing of the vote, when the last voters present in the QV at 19:00 have cast their vote, the ballot boxes are sealed and transported under police protection to the counting centers, where the counting of the votes by the Vote Counting Groups (GNV) is supervised by the Election Administration Zone Commission (KZAZ). Any disputes about the counting of the votes are first addressed by the KZAZ. If the KZAZ fails to reach an agreement, the issue is escalated to the KQZ.
Once all the votes are counted in a ZAZ, the collated voting data from the QV in the ZAZ are put on public display for all the observers and the media present. This is the first election during which the results per ZAZ will be published in this manner. In the past, the results were only transmitted to the KQZ.
Vote counting is expected to go on the day(s) after the elections, but several polling bureaus have scheduled exit polls.
