Opening more polling stations which will work overtime and lengthening voting periods were some of the steps taken to make parliamentary elections easier for expatriates the second time around, Doaa El-Bey reports Egyptians living abroad started voting in the second phase of the parliamentary elections last Thursday when the Supreme Elections Committee (SEC) posted election forms on its website. Voting either in person or by post was open until Monday evening in all Egyptian embassies, as well as 11 consulates. Sorting out ballots began as soon as voting closed in embassies and consulates, in the presence of representatives from the Egyptian communities. Like the first phase and the run-offs, the results were sent to the Foreign Ministry in Cairo, which then submitted them to the SEC. The SEC is expected to announce the results along with those of elections inside the country. Egypt's Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr had directed embassies and consulates to extend their working hours into the evening during the elections, Amr Roshdi, the ministry's spokesman said. The extension worked in favour of Ahmed Eissa, a marketing communications manager in a medical college, who went to the embassy shortly before midnight. Eissa found the procedures of registering and filling out the papers straightforward enough. However, he was surprised when an employee in the embassy asked him to open his voting envelope. When he told the employee that this was not included in the instructions in the official elections website, the employee replied, "forget the website, this is how you should do it." "I said the envelopes would look like they had been tampered with but he assured me that that was not a problem," Eissa told Al-Ahram Weekly. Apart from that odd incident, the process went smoothly, taking less than five minutes, Eissa added. However, he pointed to the fact that the two volunteers at the ballot box had long beards, affirming the rumour that had been spreading in Doha, Qatar that the Egyptian ambassador had selected a group of volunteers made up of members of the Muslim Brotherhood to supervise and help in sorting out votes. Eissa also noted a few other points which he believed to be violations: ballot boxes were closed but without locks, which meant that volunteers who could be supporters of a particular party could easily open the box and replace or add envelopes. "The other thing is while it clearly states that the envelope must be unmarked, the embassy employee wrote on my two voting envelopes my electoral district and stapled them, making the mark very obvious." Amr had also ordered nine Egyptian consulates to open polling centres, in addition to those already set up at embassies, for voting in the second and third phases of the elections in order to maximise expat participation. The polling stations were set up in Jeddah, Dubai, Los Angeles, Houston, Sydney, Melbourne, Marseilles, Milan and Montreal, homes to some of the largest Egyptian communities abroad. The short voting time was a problem for voter Adham Ghoz who monitored the sorting out process of the first phase at the Egyptian Embassy in London. He said that dozens of envelopes were discarded because they arrived after the deadline. "I tried to persuade the ambassador to accept these envelopes because the voters sent them before the deadline," Ghoz told the Weekly in a phone interview. He acknowledged that the law gives the ambassador the right to reject ballots past the deadline, "but it is a waste of expatriate votes because the election time was so tight." While Ghoz confirmed that the sorting was transparent and done by the book he said the election process was very slow because the embassy had to work on the administrative side -- making sure the voter documents are complete -- before voting. He suggested the need for more embassy employees to speed up the sorting process. Ghoz also noted that the monitors did not know the results of the voting in the end. "I mean the exact number of votes for each party. We were told that the embassy has strict instructions not to reveal the results. But that defeats the whole purpose of monitoring," he said. The other challenge that faced many expatriates was the need to use national ID cards to cast their vote. Mohamed El-Sayed, a student who lives in England, said a considerable number of second-generation Egyptians do not have such a card. The registration period was also very short, which is why only around 350,000 (of an estimated 7-10 million Egyptian expatriates who have the right to vote) took part in the elections. "I opted to go in person to the embassy to deliver my envelope. A three-day period for voting is of course not enough to send your ballot by ordinary mail especially if you live in a city far away from London," El-Sayed explained. However, El-Sayed sees a positive side in the process. "I felt more attached to my country. This is the first time in my life, I'm 31, to vote in an election. It made us feel that we have a say in the future of our country. We've been following the news of the elections closer than many people in Egypt," El-Sayed added. Government reports estimate that 105,000 Egyptians living abroad are eligible to vote in the second phase. Elections abroad go through the same phases as those at home. Those who took part in the second phase are expatriates originally from Aswan, Beheira, Beni Sweif, Giza, Ismailia, Menoufiya, Sharqiya, Sohag and Suez. More than 120,000 voters out of 169,000 registered took part in the first round. Less than half this number took part in the run-off. All voters were required to register their names before the elections were held; they were given a code number in order to be able to vote. Registration was open from 10 to 19 November. During this period, Egyptian embassies and consulates abroad provided expatriates with information about registration via e-mail, Facebook and mobile phones and by placing advertisements in media used by Egyptians. Voting by Egyptian expatriates started last month, two days before the first round of elections. The voting was held after Egypt's ruling military council changed the election law to allow Egyptians abroad to cast their ballots at embassies or by post. The decision to allow expatriates to take part in the parliamentary elections came after an administrative court ruling in October that ordered the government to facilitate voting for Egyptian residents abroad. Last month, the SEC agreed that embassies and consulates abroad be used as polling stations. Allowing Egyptians abroad to vote, the first time in the country's history, was one of the positive results of the 25 January Revolution.
