TEHRAN

Voting in the Iranian snap presidential election was extended by two hours until 8 p.m. local time (1630 GMT), the election headquarters announced on Friday.

Voting lines opened at 8 a.m. on Friday and were supposed to close at 6 p.m., as per the Constitutional norm of the 10-hour voting process.

However, to allow more people to cast their ballots, the authorities decided to extend it.

There is a likelihood of more extensions beyond 8 p.m. as witnessed in previous elections.

Four candidates – Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Saeed Jalili, Masoud Pezeshkian, and Mostafa Pourmohammadi – are vying for the presidency of the Islamic Republic after the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month.

Around 64 million people are eligible to vote in this election, the majority of whom are young people. In the 2021 presidential election, 59.3 million people had the right to vote.

A total of 58,640 polling stations were set up across the country to facilitate voting, more than 6,000 of which are in Tehran.

Outside the country, the Foreign Ministry has designated 344 polling stations for overseas Iranians to exercise their voting rights, except for Canada which did not allow it.

Voter turnout is expected to be higher than the 2021 presidential election as evident from long queues in front of polling stations in different cities of Iran.

The 2021 presidential vote when Raisi won by a landslide witnessed record low voter turnout of around 49%.

The results would be announced on Saturday afternoon, according to election headquarters.

Three of the four candidates – conservatives Qalibaf and Jalili and reformist Pezeshkian – are locked in a tight contest, according to independent observers with a high likelihood of the election going to a run-off.

If none of the four hopefuls secures more than 50% of the vote, the second round will be held on July 5, and the two candidates with the highest number of votes will face each other.