Newsrooms across Armenia continue to receive reports of a tense Election Day...

• Reporting from the town of Abovian, Social-Democratic Hunchakian Party chairwoman Lyudmila Sargsyan told ArmeniaNow that two proxies for opposition candidate Levon Ter Petrosyan were put in cars, driven to the outskirts of town, and released.

• In Kapan, an ArmeniaNow reporter saw uniformed policemen in Precincts 38/02 and 38/05. Policemen have no right to be in polling stations unless called by an election commission head.

Cases of violence reportedly perpetrated by Levon Ter-Petrosyan supporters, however, have been looked at and grounds found for investigation.

Likewise the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said the vote was “mostly in line with the country’s international commitments”.

The two major observer bodies released preliminary reports today that hardly compared to on-site accounts from polling stations where mass fraud was alleged.

After a constitutionally-imposed “day of rest” in campaigning, voting polls across Armenia opened this morning to determine who will serve as the country’s fifth president.

The weekend saw both oppositionist Levon Ter-Petrosyan and ruling party leader Serge Sargsyan draw impressive crowds that marched from Liberty Square to Republic Square turning major thoroughfares into parade grounds. Though party estimates dramatically inflated turnout, a rough calculation by ArmeniaNow using a grid method of counting estimated the crowds at about 40,000 each.

As he voted, the PM joked with reporters who asked who would win today: “The impression is that you have just arrived in Armenia, because I have repeatedly spoken about who will win.”

As of 5 p.m. Central Election Commission reports that 57.14 percent of Armenia’s 2.3 million voters have cast ballots.

Meanwhile, the latest round of allegations . . .

• According to Armenia’s Helsinki Committee chairman Avetik Ishkanyan, voter bribing was recorded in Gyumri by a cameraperson representing Gala TV, who was then attacked by a woman distributing money to voters.

According to widely-published analyst on Armenian affairs, Richard Giragosian, the initial and unofficial reaction from some US State Department sources to Tuesday’s election in Armenia is “surprise and outrage”.

Giragosian, who frequently contributes to ArmeniaNow and is a regular contributor for Radio Free Europe and a consultant to international agencies that include the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, lives in Yerevan but is on business in Washington.

However, few would predict that the voter activity would beat all expectations to stand at roughly the same level (or even exceed) that Armenians registered when they elected their first president (incidentally Ter-Petrosyan) in October 1991 – after decades of having been deprived of a real democratic election by Soviet rulers. (Queues at polling stations were observed all over the former Communist bloc countries in the early 90s).

Armenian voters went to polls in overcast but unseasonably mild weather today to select the republic’s fifth president.

Outgoing president Robert Kocharyan promised equally fair conditions as a forecast for the process of the vote. If his promise holds, it would be the first time in at least four presidential elections that Armenia has achieved an election that meets international definitions of “free and fair”.