MOSCOW. Feb 28 (Interfax) - The Golos Association is launching an SMS-CEC (Central Electoral Commission) service for observers and their organizations for the March 4 presidential election, the association said.

"First of all, the SMS-CEC service will help tackle the re-writing of protocols in territorial electoral commissions; and secondly, it will help conduct the parallel final count," the association said in a press release obtained by Interfax on Tuesday.

The service will allow observers to promptly communicate information from a polling station immediately after obtaining protocol data: SMS messages will be processed in real time and voters will know the result before the preliminary results are announced by the CEC, the press release said.

"As soon as the results of the voting are known at a polling station, each observer accredited with the service will be able to send a text containing information about the vote count to a special number," the association said.

Thus, the polling station's figures will be known even before local election officials deliver the protocol to a territorial electoral commission, the document said. "And they still need to travel to deliver the protocol and enter its data in the national automatic vote counting system," the statement said.

"Starting from 9 p.m. Moscow time, data obtained from observers will be made available to the public on the sms.golos.org server and updated in real time," the press release said.

The candidates, organizations and projects which send election officials, observers and reporters to polling stations should have their observers' phone numbers centrally accredited for the SMS service beforehand and distributed among their group.

"To make sure that information is authentic no data will be accepted from non-accredited phone numbers," the press release said.

Public controllers from the Golos Association and the Citizen Observer and RosVybory (Russian Election) projects will be accredited with the SMS-CEC in the very near future, the association said.

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MOSCOW. Feb 28 (Interfax) - The Golos Association is launching an SMS-CEC (Central Electoral Commission) service for observers and their organizations for the March 4 presidential election, the association said.

"First of all, the SMS-CEC service will help tackle the re-writing of protocols in territorial electoral commissions; and secondly, it will help conduct the parallel final count," the association said in a press release obtained by Interfax on Tuesday.

The service will allow observers to promptly communicate information from a polling station immediately after obtaining protocol data: SMS messages will be processed in real time and voters will know the result before the preliminary results are announced by the CEC, the press release said.

"As soon as the results of the voting are known at a polling station, each observer accredited with the service will be able to send a text containing information about the vote count to a special number," the association said.

Thus, the polling station's figures will be known even before local election officials deliver the protocol to a territorial electoral commission, the document said. "And they still need to travel to deliver the protocol and enter its data in the national automatic vote counting system," the statement said.

"Starting from 9 p.m. Moscow time, data obtained from observers will be made available to the public on the sms.golos.org server and updated in real time," the press release said.

The candidates, organizations and projects which send election officials, observers and reporters to polling stations should have their observers' phone numbers centrally accredited for the SMS service beforehand and distributed among their group.

"To make sure that information is authentic no data will be accepted from non-accredited phone numbers," the press release said.

Public controllers from the Golos Association and the Citizen Observer and RosVybory (Russian Election) projects will be accredited with the SMS-CEC in the very near future, the association said.