Mongols Flock to Polls for First Free Vote : Asia: Communists are expected to win. But the multi-party elections will likely weaken their power.

This country’s 2 million people, some riding to the polls on horseback, voted Sunday in their first free elections since the Communist Party’s surrender of its guaranteed monopoly on power.

More than three-quarters of the electorate had voted four hours before the polls were to close, officials said.

Diplomats in the capital, Ulan Bator, predicted that the Communist Party would win but that its authority, unchallenged for 69 years, would be much weakened.

“Everything is peaceful. Everyone knows the Communists will win. There’s no fuss,” said one resident.

But one invited foreign observer, Maciej Jankowski from Poland, spoke of confusion at some polling stations.

Ballot papers were left on tables instead of being put into sealed boxes, and some people held three voting cards, Jankowski told reporters after visiting about 30 electoral districts.

Observers from the United States and the Soviet Union reported no serious problems.

The election will be followed by a second round of voting next Sunday with candidates whittled down to two for each of the 430 contested seats in the Great People’s Hural. Results of Sunday’s elections are expected today.

Some people rode 20 miles into Ulan Bator on horseback to vote. Others arrived in trucks and buses.

Electoral officers dressed in traditional robes set off on motorcycle, carrying red, sealed voting boxes into remote mountain areas.

Although the Communists are expected to dominate the newly elected Great People’s Hural, the opposition may fare better in the Small Hural, the 53-seat body that drafts legislation.

Some diplomats even predicted that the opposition would gain a slim majority in the Small Hural because its members are elected on the basis of direct proportional representation.

Seats in the Great People’s Hural are weighted in favor of the conservative countryside, where the Communists can count on stronger support.

Mongolia, sandwiched between the Communist giants of China and the Soviet Union, is the latest country to ride the wave of democracy that has swept the Communist world in the past year.

The Communist Party, officially called the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, changed its leadership and in March gave up its guaranteed monopoly on power.