The results of the March 4 presidential elections were annulled at a polling station in the Dagestani village of Tarumovka after staff where spotted by web cameras opening the ballot box before the approved time, the local election commission said on Monday.
The web cameras broadcast live footage from the village of Tarumovka in Dagestan, where two people allegedly inserted bulletins one after another into automated ballot boxes.
The results of the vote in Tarumovka were declared invalid. However, investigators, did not confirm ballot stuffing at the polling station.
“There was no ballot-stuffing, we have thoroughly looked into this incident and found that members of the electoral commission had pulled ballot boxes to start counting the results before the approved time,” an official from the local election commission said, adding that this was “a serious violation” and the results were annulled.
Russia’s presidential elections on Sunday brought Prime Minister Vladimir Putin a landslide victory, winning him 63.71 percent of the vote after 99.5 percent of ballots were counted.
The communist leader Gennady Zyuganov received 17.19 percent, while billionaire-turned-politician Mikhail Prokhorov secured 7.88 percent of the vote.
According to the opposition, the elections are illegitimate because mass vote rigging, ballot stuffing and falsification took place to secure Putin’s victory.