Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) has been allocated RUB17.7bn ($302mn) for cover the costs of running the presidential election scheduled for March 2018, the commission said in a statement on December 18.

As there is little doubt that President Vladimir Putin will be elected for his fourth non-consecutive 6-year presidential term in 2018, the Kremlin is expected to work hard to ensure a clean and legitimate victory and set a solid voting system in place.

About 14,000 ballot processing and electronic voting systems are set to be used during the voting, the CEC Deputy Chairman Nikolai Bulayev told Tass.

"As a result, on March 18 our polling stations will be equipped with 13,000 ballot processing systems and 1,000 electronic voting systems that were made a long time ago but are in good working order," he stressed, adding that there will be a total of about 14,000 electronic systems, one per each polling station.

in past years Russia has also had CCTV cameras in polling stations that live stream to the internet. However, that has resulted in some red faces when these camera catch ballot box stuffing and other infractions.

The greatest threat to Putin's re-election is perhaps public apathy or indecisiveness, with recent polls showing that over 40% of Russian don’t know who to vote for, or whether they would vote at all.

As demonstrated in the municipal and regional elections in September, record-low voter turnover could jeopardise Kremlin's plan for a “70/70” presidential election, where 70% of the population vote for Putin as president and there is a 70% turnout. 

In the last parliamentary elections in 2016 over half of all voters stayed at home and didn't vote.