EC: Parliamentary Election results will be announced later than Presidential Elections

Results of the parliamentary elections underway this Saturday will be announced later than the last presidential elections, says Elections Commission (EC).

Polling began at 8 am and is scheduled to close at 4 pm.

President of EC, Ahmed Shareef says there’s a possibility the results will be announced later than the presidential elections of 2018 as officials will need more time to sort out the ballots cast by voters to ballot boxes which serve multiple constituencies.

“Vote counting and announcement of results will take more time. Because voters from 50 constituencies will be casting their votes to a single ballot box. We will generate a separate a separate result sheet for each constituency,” said Shareef.

Member and Spokesperson of EC, Ahmed Akram said the commission will be generating over 8,700 result sheets from the 501 ballot boxes spread across Maldives and abroad.

“It will take time when all the result sheets are sent to us at once. It will take more time than the presidential elections,” said Akram.

Akram added that the EC is using 60 officials to assist in the result announcement process.

386 candidates contesting for 87 seats at the Parliament in this Saturday’s elections.

264,442 Maldivians have the right to vote in the elections.

493 of the total 501 ballot boxes are situated in Maldives, while the remaining eight ballot boxes are located abroad in Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia and the UK.