Muscovites to vote for mayor in early elections on September 8

MOSCOW. September 8. KAZINFORM An election race for the office of Moscow mayor has entered its final stage. The 12-million Moscow is going to elect the mayor on Sunday for the first time over the past ten years.

The ballot papers include the names of six officially registered candidates places in the alphabetical order: Mikhail Degtyaryov from the LDPR; Nikolai Levichev, the chairman of A Just Russia party; Ivan Melnikov, the first deputy head of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Russia; Sergei Mitrokhin, the head of the Yabloko party; Alexei Navalny, a candidate of the RPR-PARNAS (Republican Party of Russia - People's Freedom Party); and a self-nominee, Sergei Sobyanin, who is Moscow's acting mayor.

More than 7 million voters have been registered in Moscow. A total of 7,186 million ballot papers have been printed. Moscow has 3,397 polling stations. They will open at 8:00 in the morning on Sunday and will close at 20:00. A total of 6,792 video cameras have been installed to monitor the elections.

Moscow is going to elect a mayor fir the first time in the past ten years. Sergei Sobyanin became the capital's third mayor on October 21, 2010. He replaced Yuri Luzhkov who had run the city for 18 years, according to Itar-Tass.