Elections in Kazakhstan

Elections in Kazakhstan are held on a national level to elect a President and the Parliament, which is divided into two bodies, the Majilis (Lower House) and the Senate (Upper House). Local elections for maslikhats (local representative bodies) are held every five years.

Elections are administered by the Central Election Commission of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

There are more than 10 political parties in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan’s political opposition is the most developed in the region in terms of its organizational abilities and resources.

None of the elections held in Kazakhstan have been considered free or fair by Western countries or international observers with issues noted including ballot tampering,multiple voting,repression of opposition candidates]] and press censorship. The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights has deployed election monitors to Kazakhstan for observation of parliamentary and presidential elections since 1999.

In the recent Kazakh elections, many Kazakh voters were offered a choice of voting on electronic voting machines or on paper ballots. At least some of the ballot boxes used in Kazakhstan are transparent in order to defend against ballot box stuffing. Each polling place was equipped with both a large ballot box and smaller mobile ballot boxes. The latter are designed to be carried, by poll-workers, to voters outside the polling place. This is an alternative to offering absentee ballots or proxy voting for voters with disabilities that prevent them from going to the polls.

Electronic voting in Kazakhstan is based on the AIS "Sailau" electronic voting system developed in Belarus and Kazakhstan. This system is best described as an indirect-recording electronic voting system, as opposed to the DRE voting machines that have been more widely studied. In this system, the touch-screen voting terminal in the voting booth serves as a ballot marking device, recording selections on a smart card. The voting terminal itself retains no record of the vote after the voter takes the smart card. The voter then takes the smart card containing the cast ballot record to the computer at the registration table that serves as the electronic ballot box where the permanent record of the vote is retained and tabulated.

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