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Kremlin urges firms to boost turnout

Russian companies are heeding Kremlin calls for a high voter turnout in elections today, with offers of food discounts, prize draws on kitchen appliances and even text message reminders.

Some of the gambits in Russia's regions carry an echo of Soviet times, when voters were offered a rich spread of cakes and snacks at polling stations, a welcome respite from frequent food shortages.

For the upcoming election, the fifth since the fall of the Soviet Union, the turnout drive has taken a more modern twist, including a huge SMS text message campaign encouraging people to vote.

A local firm in Novorossiisk, a southern Russian city, is offering voters the prospect of winning a car in a prize draw and in Vladivostok on Russia's Pacific coast, voters can get free mobile phone credits at the stations.

A spokeswoman for mobile phone operator Megafon said that the company would send messages to all of its 35 million subscribers to encourage them to vote after getting a request from the Central Election Commission (CEC).

"Go to the polls on December 2! Your vote is important for the country!" read SMS text messages received by Megafon subscribers, repeating slogans on posters and television ads paid for by the CEC.

"It was a request from the Central Election Commission. I saw the letter myself," said the Megafon spokeswoman Marina Belyasheva.

She declined to say how much the mass text messaging cost.
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