About 50,650,000 Egyptian citizens will be eligible to vote in the upcoming parliamentary elections, expected to begin in the latter part of November and be carried out in three stages, Assistant Interior Minister for Administrative Affairs Refat Qomsan said on Thursday. Qomsan said in a seminar on Thursday that the new voting database, which contains personal information on citizens over 18 years old, is based on each citizen's permanent residence, as specified on his or her ID card. He stressed that there would be no errors on official voting lists this year, which have in the past included the names of underaged or deceased voters. Qomsan said all voters will be able to access the voter database through the internet one day before the elections to find out the polling stations where they can cast their votes. He added that each polling station will only allow a maximum of 1000 voters in order to reduce congestion outside the stations. Qomsan asserted that Egypt will not use an electronic voting system for the upcoming elections, since it involves many risks and is not widely used aside from in the US and Switzerland, who both possess advanced technology in this field. He did not, however, rule out an adoption of this system in the election's later stages. There are certain groups of people who do not have the right to vote according to the law, Qomsan added, including police officers, military personnel, citizens involved in criminal cases, and the mentally ill. Parliamentary elections conducted under the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak required voters to have electoral cards that could be obtained at police stations, and the body of voters did not exceed 32 million. Translated from the Arabic Edition
