Kazakhstan Plans Runoff Elections

Voters in Kazakhstan must vote in runoff elections after polls failed to fill the lower house of the Central Asian nation’s parliament, initial results showed Sunday.

Only 43 of the lower chamber’s 67 seats were filled in Saturday’s voting, election commission chairman Yuri Kim told the Interfax news agency.

That left the parliament two seats short of the two-thirds needed to reach a quorum and make the former Soviet republic’s legislature valid.

Neither candidate in the remaining 24 races managed to gain 50 or more percent of the votes necessary to win the seat.