Moscow:
Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin voted from space on Sunday for a new Parliament in which Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia party is expected to emerge victorious.
The cosmonauts, away on the mission at the International Space Station (ISS), voted via their trustee Dmitry Zhukov, a representative of the Cosmonauts Training Centre, Voice of Russia quoted Mission Control officials as saying.
Zhukov came to the Mission Control Centre for a confidential communication session with the cosmonauts. They told him the name of the political party they wanted to vote for.
After that Zhukov cast the filled bulletins in the ballot box observing the secrecy of ballot.
Amid reports of numerous violations and ballot rigging, 110 million Russians are voting to elect the State Duma - lower House of Parliament - the sixth post-Soviet House.
Putin's United Russia party is expected to win but with reduced margin.
Meanwhile, the deputy chief of the Central Election Commission of Russia Leonid Ivlev announced that so far the turnout was 25.4 per cent at 2.30 IST (13.00 hours Moscow time), when voting closed in seven far eastern Russian regions.
With voting in progress in the Russian Federation's densely populated western and southern regions, the total turnout is expected rise.
However, opinion polls carried out ahead of today's Duma election forecast a lower turnout than in last 2007 polls when over 60 per cent registered voters cast their ballots.
The vote for the lower house of parliament, the 450-deputy State Duma are seen as a dry run of March presidential polls in which current Prime Minister Putin is expected to win back his old Kremlin job.
Opinion polls indicate that the election results could water down the strength of the country's dominant party.
Numerous reports of alleged violation and ballot rigging were reported as polling booths opened in various parts of the country.