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Sergey Ponomarev / AP
A woman pushing a cart by a mobile polling station in a bus on the Russia-Abkhazia border in Sochi on Sunday.
Sochi's election committee decided that this would be the place where people without permanent residency permits stamped in their passports could vote, said the deputy head of the polling station's commission, Gurgen Annartsumyan. He could not explain why the bus was placed on the Abkhaz border.
The Sochi election committee ruled last week that thousands of people from Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia with Russian citizenship and Sochi residency permits could participate in the mayoral election.
By 3 p.m., only four people had voted at the polling station, none of them Abkhaz. One of them, Andrei, declined to say whom he voted for but acknowledged that he was homeless. "I live here and there," he said, showing his passport with a canceled registration.
Rovshan Dzhavadov, who has no permanent registration in his passport, also successfully voted on the bus.
"Frankly, I don't think I should be allowed to decide for the people of Sochi who should be their mayor — I don't know the local problems, I live in Murmansk," Dzhavadov said.
"Theoretically, you could bus all of the homeless people in the country to vote here," he added.
The bus and its border location cap a list of grievances compiled by rivals of United Russia's candidate, acting Mayor Anatoly Pakhomov. Sunday's vote, widely seen as a test of President Dmitry Medvedev's commitment to democracy, has proved to be the most colorful election in recent memory, with opposition leader Boris Nemtsov making the final cut of six candidates.
The winner needs to collect more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a second round between the two top winners. Preliminary results were expected Monday.
An exit poll by Nemtsov's team predicted a runoff, with Pakhomov collecting 46 percent of the vote, Nemtsov getting 35 percent and Communist candidate Yury Dzagania getting 17 percent, Gazeta.ru reported.
Turnout reached 39 percent of Sochi's 290,000 eligible voters, RIA-Novosti reported shortly after Sochi's 211 polling stations closed at 8 p.m. No minimum turnout was needed to validate the election.
But even before Sunday, about 11 percent of all voters had already cast their ballots — a figure that election experts called unusually high for early voting. Nemtsov and other candidates complained that the early voting — which saw teachers, doctors and other state-paid workers being bussed to polling stations by their employers last week — was an attempt to steal the vote for Pakhomov.
Nemtsov demanded on Sunday that all the early votes be counted separately and the proportion of votes for Pakhomov be compared with the proportion cast Sunday. Candidates can ask for such a division when early votes amount to more than 1 percent of the total vote.
"Early voters for the most part were forced to vote by their employers," Nemtsov said at Polling Station No. 4,530, located in a sanatorium in Sochi's Khosta district.
The early ballots, sealed in envelopes before being cast on election day, are much easier to falsify, said Valery Suchkov, a member of Sochi's Public Chamber and a Nemtsov supporter.
Election officials reported no serious violations Sunday.
Pakhomov — plucked from his position as Anapa mayor by the Krasnodar governor to serve as acting Sochi mayor — made no public comments Sunday.
Pensioner Galina Masalkina, who voted for Pakhomov at the nearly empty Polling Station No. 58, located in the downtown Moscow Hotel, said it would be "ridiculous" to vote for the opposition because the next mayor would help prepare Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics.
"The city has to develop, to prepare for the Olympics," she said. "I don't know who Pakhomov is, but I respect United Russia, and I respect Putin. I vote for United Russia." Prime Minister Vladimir Putin heads United Russia.In Imeretinka, a neighborhood that is a part of Sochi's Adler district, many people would disagree. The neighborhood has protested against the expropriation of their land for the Olympics.
"The city needs a young and energetic mayor," said Alexander, 48, as he exited a polling station located in a local school. "I support Nemtsov. He was born in Sochi, and I like him."
Pakhomov's rivals have complained of a dirty campaign, noting that the acting mayor has received blanket coverage in the local media while they have been largely ignored except for some criticism. They also have had trouble placing billboards, distributing flyers and renting venues for rallies.
Dzagania, the Communist candidate, said Sunday that the polling station on the Abkhaz border was the last straw. Russia has issued passports to most people living in Abkhazia.
"We don't see any legal grounds for putting this polling station so suddenly on the border with Abkhazia," Dzagania said during a visit to the bus.
Abkhaz people with Russian passports can vote in presidential elections, but they should not be allowed to vote in municipal elections, he said.
"They know nothing about the candidates, and they would never vote for a candidate with a Georgian last name," said Dzagania, whose name sounds Georgian.
Alexandra Odynova contributed to this report from Moscow.
