For the first time in Russia's history, everyone can monitor the voting at every polling station in the country online.

      The authorities and the Central Elections Commission promised to make these election the most transparent in Russia's history. It was followed by last December's parliamentary election that triggered allegations of vote rigging. That's why the officials ordered to install webcameras at every polling station to stream the voting process continuously in real time.

      Webcams will not be installed at polling places in jails, closed towns, military units and hospitals.

      So, almost 90,000 polling stations is being equipped with at least two cameras – one with a general view of the ballot box and the other with a close-up of the slot. All videos will be fed to local data centers. After computer processing, they will then be sent to seven large storage and distribution facilities via cable, radio and satellite. These centers will then broadcast the information to several web portals – for everyone to watch online. The biggest of them - webvybory2012.ru

      The cost of setting up the web cameras has been estimated at 15 billion rubles ($473 million).

Sources: RIA Novosti Russia Today webvyboy2012.ru Image: netail.ru