Parliamentary elections are being held in Georgia's breakaway republic of South Ossetia.
Seventy five polling stations have been opened in the republic, the Central Elections Commission told Interfax. Three parties - Unity, the People's Party, and the Communist Party are running under the proportional voting system. In total, 34 deputies are to be elected to the parliament. Four seats have been reserved for ethnic Georgians.
The situation is normal in South Ossetia and voting is being monitored by representatives of Moscow, Transdnestria and Abkhazia. Ethnic Georgians are taking part in the voting, the commission said.
Georgian State Minister Georgy Khaindrava told Interfax on Sunday that "elections in Tskhinvali cannot be considered legitimate since they are not recognized by Tbilisi or in the rest of the world."
"Unfortunately, individual political groups in Russia support the separatist regimes in Tskhinvali and Sukhumi, which can be judged from State Duma Deputy Konstantin Zatulin's arrival in Tskhinvali and Krasnodar Governor Alexander Tkachev's arrival in Sukhumi," Khaindrava said.
He added that these politicians are not expressing the Russian authorities' official policy concerning the conflict zones in Georgia.
"However, these self-assumed missions are hampering efforts to settle the conflicts and establish normal Russian-Georgian relations," the minister said.
He said that ethnic Georgians who live in South Ossetia are not taking part in the elections.
Talks with the South Ossetian leaders on the settlement of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict will be continued, Khaindrava said.
Election Day '09 was a roller-coaster for election reformers. Instant runoff voting had a great night in Minnesota, where St. Paul voters chose to implement IRV for its city elections, and Minneapolis voters used IRV for the first time—with local media touting it as a big success. As the Star-Tribune noted in endorsing IRV for St. Paul, Tuesday’s elections give the Twin Cities a chance to show the whole state of Minnesota the benefits of adopting IRV. There were disappointments in Lowell and Pierce County too, but high-profile multi-candidate races in New Jersey and New York keep policymakers focused on ways to reform elections; the Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald were among many newspapers publishing commentary from FairVote board member and former presidential candidate John Anderson on how IRV can mitigate the problems of plurality elections.