By Alexia Saoulli
NEARLY 500,000 voters will go to the polls today to vote for a new president.
By 10pm the final results should be in and it will be known whether there will need to be a second round of voting next Sunday, Chief Returning Officer, Kyriakos Triantafyllides said yesterday.
Any one of the nine candidates who secures more than 50 per cent of the votes today will be declared president without a run-off vote having to take place. If there is no clear victor, the two candidates with the most votes will go through to the second round.
Polling stations will be open from 7am to 5pm, with a one-hour break between 12noon and 1pm, Triantafyllides said.
The total number of registered voters this year is 476,345. They will cast their ballots at a total of 1,076 voting centres.
Nicosia District has 195,658 voters and 414 voting centres, Limassol has 134,041 voters and 323 voting centres, Larnaca 79,391 and 169, Paphos 41,822 and 120, and Famagusta District has 25,433 voters and 50 voting centres. There are also 405 voters living in the occupied areas; they will be voting at two special polling stations set up in Nicosia.
This year is the first time that the ballot papers will be counted at the polling stations, Triantafyllides said. The first results are expected in, from smaller voting centres, around an hour after they close this evening, he said.
Voters will only be allowed to use black or blue ink and a ballot paper will be considered spoiled if the voter’s choice is not clearly marked, two candidates have been chosen, if it is blank, or if it fails to carry the Republic’s official seal on the outside.
The cost of the elections “has been estimated at £3.7 million for both Sundays — if there is no second round this will be halved”, added Triantafyllides.
Ten thousand employees are expected to work today to cover all aspects of the elections from monitoring polling stations and keeping guard, to counting the votes, safely transporting the ballots and issuing the final voting results, he said.
Electioneering came to an official halt at midnight on Friday, after which all political advertising and rallies were banned for 24 hours before today’s vote.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
