Presidential election with the lowest turnout to date

Elections Commission (EC) states Saturday’s presidential election had the lowest voter turnout to date; being approximately 75 percent of the eligible voters.

EC’s Secretary General Hassan Zakariyya told Sun that the voter turnout remains unclear at the moment, as vote counting is underway. However, he stressed that this year’s election had a low voter turnout ‘compared to a presidential election’.

A total of 282,395 people were eligible to cast their votes; 75 percent of this amounts to 211,769 people.

This election, however, marks the presidential election with the greatest number of candidates – with eight presidential hopefuls.

As per the latest statistics from EC, only 58.42 percent people had voted as of 14:00pm; 82,183 women and 82,798 women.

Voting began at 8:00am on Saturday morning, while queues at polling stations closed at 4:00pm, as planned. As a result, some voters who lost the chance to cast their vote caused disturbances in some areas of the capital Male’ City.

During previous elections, EC has extended the queue closing times – to allow as many as people to cast their votes. On the contrary, this year, the queues at polling stations were closed at 4:00pm sharp – meaning only people who had already queued were able to vote.