Counting Process to Start Immediately after Closure of Polling Stations: Iranian Official
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Iran’s Interior Ministry announced that the country will officially start counting process as soon as closure of the polling stations.
“Counting (of votes) will start whenever the voting process is finished,” Hossein-Ali Amiri, the interior ministry’s spokesman, told the Tasnim News Agency on Friday.
The parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections have been extended for two more hours beyond the initial time limit.
Polling stations opened at 8 am on Friday morning and were scheduled to close after 10 hours, but the higher-than-expected turnout was enough to convince the Interior Ministry to extend the voting hours until 8 pm.
Some 55 million Iranians were eligible to cast their ballots at around 53,000 polling stations across the country.
4,844 and 161 candidates have been running for the parliament and the Assembly of Experts, respectively.
Meanwhile, the Guardian Council, a ranking body that qualifies the applicants for candidacy and oversees the process of elections, said in a statement that whoever has any complaints about the process of holding the polls can submit their documented complaint to the Guardian Council secretariat within the next 7 days, beginning Friday.
There are 290 seats in the Iranian parliament, elected by direct vote of people in nationwide election for four years.
The Assembly of Experts is also a high-ranking body that elects and oversees the activities of the leader of the Islamic Revolution.
Members of the 88-seat assembly are directly elected to office by people for an eight-year term. It holds biannual meetings to appoint a new chairman.