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At 7 AM sharp over 20 000 voting sections opened all over Greece to service the preliminary elections taking place today. These are the 13^th elections conducted in the country after the falling of the colonels’ regime in 1974. 10m Greeks devoted to the ancient democratic tradition are expected to cast heir votes today. While it’s time for the citizens to “talk” today, politicians wait for the critical results in suspense.

No matter which political power claim top position after today, it will face Greece’s biggest issues from day one: the public sector, limitation of budgetary expenses, finding stimuli to boost GDP grow. On October 12, less than a week after the new team becomes operative, it will have to face Eurogroup and Ecofin and request that the deadline for shrinking budget deficit below 3% be postponed until 2012.

Voting in Greece remains mandatory; however, no administrative sanctions are applied to those that fail to vote. With the right not to vote are elderly people over 70 years of age, people currently abroad and the ones whose health condition does not allow them to go to the voting sections. In Greece, voting takes place according to place of birth. 2.5 per cent of all voters will vote for the first time today. In order to be allowed to vote, the citizens need to have one of the following documents with them: an ID card, a passport (even if expired), a driver’s license or a health insurance document.

In the voting section there are 23 ballot-papers of 23 candidate parties, together with a blank one. Voting will end at 7 PM, and the first reliable results will be known at 10 PM after 20% of the ballot papers will have been counted. As with the European Parliament elections, the counting of the votes will be made through the SRT program. All TV channels will announce the results of their common exit polls at 7 PM. “Vima” newspaper, as well as the online periodical in.gr will count on their own exit poll, conducted by the sociological research company Kappa Research.

The president of Greece Karolos Papoulias votes in Ioanina, the Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis- in Thessaloniki and the head of PASOK Georgios Papandreou- in the Athenian Suburb Nea Eritrea.