Paper slips from voting machines will not be stamped at the 25 October presidential election, because they are now control receipts, not ballots. The Central Election Commission (CEC) set this out in guidelines it adopted.
Local commissions had been waiting a long time for the guidelines. They will guide the work of section election commissions (SECs) and regional election commissions (RECs) on election day. Until now, the paper printout from the machine counted as a ballot. The official record of the result in a polling station is the protocol the machine prints at the end of election day. The receipts in the boxes will also be counted, for transparency.
The boxes for the receipts will be marked "Control receipts from the machine". Voters check their choice on the receipt, fold it with the text inside and must drop it in the box. They then return the smart card marked "Voter", sign the voter list, take their ID and leave.
The guidelines for SECs pay special attention to what to do when a machine fails. The commission itself decides whether to stop machine voting and informs the relevant REC by protocol. The guidelines do not say how many failed attempts there must be before voting switches to paper. Stations with two machines stop machine voting only after both have failed.
A voter whose receipt is blank or incomplete cannot vote again, either on a machine or on paper. Such cases have happened at the last few elections.
130 machines stopped working at the last election in April. The machines are now being certified. In all, 12,800 machines must go through diagnostics and repair, and nearly 8,000 had been repaired by yesterday. The repairs are due to finish by 15 October.
The public generation of the hash code, which guarantees that the machines' software is original, will take place on Thursday, 15 October.