MOSCOW, September 20. /TASS/. The vote to elect the ninth convocation of the Russian parliament’s lower chamber, the State Duma, enters its final day on Sunday, with slightly less than 45% of citizens already casting their ballot.

The turnout stands at 44.75% as of 6:00 a.m. Moscow time on Sunday (3:00 a.m. GMT).

All polling stations will close by 8:00 p.m. local time. First results will be known after 9:00 p.m. Moscow time (6:00 p.m. GMT), when the polling stations close in Russia’s Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad.

The schedule of the vote varies from region to region. For example, in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), polling stations will close at 2:00 p.m. Moscow time (11:00 a.m. GMT). The decision was made amid the intensified drone attacks and the need to safely deliver ballots after the vote is over.

On the second day, a number of high-ranking officials cast their ballot, including Federation Council (upper chamber) Speaker Valentina Matviyenko and her First Deputy Vladimir Yakushev, Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyarev. Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told TASS he had voted online on Friday evening.

Even before day two of the elections was nearing its end, over 5.8 million voters already cast their ballots online. This exceeds all previous figures.

Over 3.2 million people used the Remote Electronic Vote (REV) platform, while another 2.6 million votes were received by the Moscow electronic vote system.

At the same time, electronic vote systems have been targeted by attacks. In the early hours of Saturday, the Moscow election system came under a powerful outside attack, Central Election Commission (CEC) Chair Ella Pamfilova said. She added that all attacks have been repelled, and remote electronic voting in Moscow was in the standard operational mode.

In all, the Central Election Commission described the second day of the vote as calm, although sporadic incidents were reported. The Russian Interior Ministry received 367 reports related to the electoral process. Also, 24 false terrorism alerts were received in 15 Russian regions.

At the same time, public observers said the majority of reports about irregularities have not been confirmed.