DUSHANBE, December 1, 2014, Asia-Plus — Some 40 precinct election commissions (PECs) are expected to the established outside Tajikistan to facilitate out-of-country voting in the 2015 parliamentary elections due in late February next year.
“This number is fewer than the number of PECs established outside the country during the 2013 presidential election and the number of PECs established outside the country during the 2010 parliamentary elections,” Abdumannon Dodoyev, the head of the Central Commission for Elections and Referenda (CCER)’s office, told Asia-Plus in an interview.
According to him, reduction in the number of polling stations outside the country has been caused by amendments made to the country’s election legislation. “Under these amendments, the polling stations will be established outside the country only in territories where the country’s diplomatic representations function,” Dodoyev said.
“In Russia, the polling stations can be established only in Moscow, where Tajikistan’s embassy functions, and in the cities of Ufa and Yekaterinburg, where the country’s general consulates function,” the CCER’s office head added.
We will recall that during the 2013 presidential election, 24 polling stations were established in the Russian Federation alone. In 2013, to facilitate out-of-country voting additional polling stations were established in the following Russian cities and regions: Moscow; St. Petersburg; Tver; Tula; Yaroslavl; Ryazan, Kaliningrad; Saratov, Volgograd; Kazan; Ufa; Nizhny Novgorod; Krasnodar; Astrakhan; Yekaterinburg; Tyumen; Krasnoyarsk; Blagoveshchensk; Chelyabinsk; Novosibirsk; Samara; Perm; Khabarovsk; and the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic.
Besides, the polling stations were established Afghanistan (4), Turkey (2), the United States (2), Iran (2), Saudi Arabia (2), United Arab Emirates (2), China (2), Kazakhstan (2), Uzbekistan (1), Japan (1), Kyrgyzstan (1), Pakistan (1), India (1), Egypt (1), Azerbaijan (1), Turkmenistan (1), etc.
During the 2010 parliamentary elections, additional polling stations were established in eight large cities of the Russian Federation.
