Russia's presidential election kicked off in Moscow on Sunday, in which four candidates are vying to replace President Vladimir Putin, who is constitutionally barred from a third consecutive term.
Dmitry Medvedev, first deputy prime minister of Putin's cabinet, is expected to win the election by a landslide, thanks to publicly voiced supports from Putin who is to stepping down in May.
Other candidates are Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Andrei Bogdanov, the leader of the Democratic Party.
All the candidates, as well as President Putin, will cast their ballots in Moscow, where there are 3,283 polling stations and some 7 million eligible voters.
An election poster showing Russian President Vladimir Putin and presidential candidate Dmitry Medvedev is seen next to tower of the Kremlin in Moscow March 1, 2008. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) A candidate has to win more than 50 percent of the votes in the first round of election to get the top job of the nation. Otherwise, a run-off will be held between the top two front runners in the race.
The Central Election Commission (CEC) said there are some 108.94million eligible voters who are expected to go to the 96,301 polling stations scattered around the vast country on Sunday and among which, 364 polling stations are opened in 142 countries and regions for Russian citizens aboard.
In some remote areas voting started about two weeks before the election date.
Since Russia spans 11 time zones, Russia's far eastern region of Kamchatka first started the election Saturday night.
The people in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave located between Poland and Lithuania will be the last on the Russian territory to stop casting their ballots at 1800 GMT on Sunday.
Source:Xinhua
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