Putin Clears Hurdle; Voter Turnout Climbs

MOSCOW – Voter turnout in Russia’s presidential election surpassed the required 50 percent minium with polls still open Sunday, removing the last significant obstacle to President Vladimir Putin’s winning a second term.

Casting his ballot in Moscow, Putin had urged voters to head to the polls. The Kremlin feared Russians might not turn out because of an uninspired race and a lackluster campaign that gave little attention to his five challengers – none of them expected to draw more than single-digit support.

Those fears were unfounded. Nearly 52 percent of Russia’s 109 million voters had cast ballots several hours before polls closed, Central Election Commission chief Alexander Veshnyakov said, according to the Interfax news agency.

“The feeling of involvement must increase year on year,” Putin said, casting his ballot alongside his wife, Lyudmila. “Voters must understand the extent of responsibility when they make their choice … much depends on this election.”

As voting wound down in Russia’s isolated Kamchatka Peninsula and other Far East regions, Muscovites and voters elsewhere in Russia headed out to cast ballots under bright sunny skies.

The voting will stretch over 11 time zones and take 22 hours before ending at Sunday evening in the enclave of Kaliningrad.

Opinion polls had predicted Putin would get more than 75 percent of the vote, and most Russians considered the election a one-man show. In the run-up to election day, Putin received blanket coverage on state-controlled television and his five challengers had little opportunity to woo voters.

Galina Viktorovna, a 47-year-old kindergarten teacher from St. Petersburg, said she cast her ballot for Putin “because I knew him better then other candidates,” echoing a reason cited by many voters.

Blanket coverage of Putin on state-controlled television – and previous crackdowns that long ago forced major independent TV channels off the airwaves – meant that his five challengers had little opportunity to woo voters. The challengers include a Communist, a pro-business liberal, two nationalists and a pro-Kremlin lawmaker.

Some liberals called for an election boycott as the only way for Russians to express dissatisfaction with Putin. Voters can also choose to cast their ballots “against all.”

In the run-up to the vote, cities have been blanketed with posters urging Russians to go to the polls. Officials have also tried to woo voters with incentives; in the Pacific port of Vladivostok, bread was being sold at polling booths for 25 cents cheaper than in nearby stores.

In Vladivostok, voters already had lined up by the time the precincts opened. One polling station at Middle School No. 28, reported that 2,500 out of the 2,583 voters on their list cast ballots.

Dmitry Mikhailov, 22, a sports club manager in Moscow, wasn’t persuaded.

“I don’t think that voting in this election will change anything because it is like bargaining for a price with a monopoly,” he said.

Sergei Zubov, 52, an engineer, cast a ballot in the Russian capital for nationalist Sergei Glazyev because of his hard-line against oligarchs, a small group of businessmen who made fortunes after the breakup of the Soviet Union in often murky deals.

In Chechnya, where Russia is waging its second war in a decade, two bombs went off near polling stations early Sunday but no one was hurt, an Emergency Situations Ministry spokesman said.

Putin has not openly campaigned, instead relying on his image as a stable, disciplined leader to appeal to a nation still traumatized by the political and social upheavals that followed the Soviet Union’s collapse.

More than 500 foreign observers are registered to watch the voting, including representatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Some opposition candidates were also planning their own monitoring.

In addition to Glazyev, Putin faces Communist Party candidate Nikolai Kharitonov; pro-business liberal Irina Khakamada; Oleg Malyshkin, the little-known candidate from flamboyant nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s party; and Sergei Mironov, who has said he was running to support the incumbent.