The Central Electoral Commission said the unusually long ballot papers are indicative of a high level of activity among political parties in this Turkic-language-speaking region, granted autonomous status by the republican parliament in 1994.
It also said that the campaign for Moldova's June 3 elections to regional governments and local councils had entered its final stage now, with 1,934 polling stations set up across the post- Soviet country, sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania.
Ballot papers featured in March 2006 parliamentary elections in Ukraine were .8 meters (2.6 feet) long, or two-thirds the prospective length of Moldovan ballots.
Analysts said Moldova's forthcoming regional polls could slightly change the political landscape in this impoverished country of four million, which emerged as an independent nation after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but is still living under Communist rule.
Moldova's governing Communist Party swept back to power after a landslide victory in 2001 parliamentary elections, but failed to maintain its absolute majority in a March 2005 vote, gaining only 46%.
