Russia 2012 election underway

It's 5 pm in Russia (well, the country spans 11 time zones, so it's 5 pm in Moscow), and the Moscow Times is live blogging the election - in English. No results yet of course...

Here's a guy in Barnaul casting his vote dressed like a polar bear. That guy behind him? He's not naked, he's what Russians call a моржа (morzha) - a walrus - and we call, coincidentally, a polar bear - that is, an ice-swimmer. The bear-guy came into the polling place with half-a-dozen or so of them. (They're carrying their passports, which are their voter ids. This year, there are cameras and webcams at the vast majority of polling places in an attempt to demonstrate transparency and honesty.) Photos from Komsomolskaya Pravda's web site.