Last updated on December 17, 2013

Poll workers are responsible for organizing polling on the Election Day. They are responsible for the equipment and reserve equipment. Civil society groups generally do not observe Election Day procedures. Political parties, in contrast, send representatives to polling places. This practice is not universal, as not all parties have the size and organization to observe elections widely. Larger parties are more likely to have widespread observer representation at polling stations.

At 7.30 a.m. on Election Day, the president of the precinct turns on the e-voting machine in front of representatives of the parties, as well as the other poll workers. The e-voting machine prints out a report, called “zeresima,” which certifies the ballot box is empty, i.e. that there is no candidate with a pre-assigned number of votes. No other tests at this stage of elections are allowed. Consequently, no reports are made. According to the political parties, their representatives at the polling locations do not have the technical capacity to check the system properly during Election Day. 

Close-out procedures for Election Day are as follows:

• At 5:00 p.m. on Election Day, the president of the precinct uses his or her password to close the voting machine and print a voting machine report for the precinct. This report contains: precinct’s identification code; voting machine’s identification code; number of voters who attended and voted; and total voting results for each candidate.
• Five copies of the report are printed. These five copies are signed by the president of the precinct and representatives and inspectors of political parties. One copy is displayed announcing the results of the precinct. Three copies are sent to the Electoral Committee. The last copy is delivered to the Political Parties Committee. If required, the machine can print out five additional copies that can be distributed to the district attorney of the political parties, representatives of the press and the public prosecution office. The copy delivered to the Political Parties Committee is extremely important, because it allows parties to check whether the data have been modified during transmission. Upon data reception, the TRE and the TSE send an electronic receipt to political parties.
• The voting machine program saves the data on a diskette in an encrypted format to prevent data modification. The diskette is delivered to the local electoral committee. 

In case of problems, each polling station has the additional reserve e-voting machines to replace the failed one. If no replacement voting machines are available, a paper ballot is used.

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