Egyptian Chronicles: Live Blogging : Egypt Chooses its president “Day 2” #egyelections

8:54 AM CLT

The polling stations have opened their doors for voters from almost an hour ago. The turnout is noticeably higher compared to yesterday in this time from my own observation.
The Qomia language school got a long women’s queue while a mixed polling station at Technical journalism institute in Boulaq got medium size queues. It is worth to mention that it is an official day off in the public sector and many private sector companies gave its employees a day off in order to vote. There are long queues in Maadi.
The streets are empty and many shops closed their doors.
The turnout in the governorates is not high according to the reports. May be we are speaking about early morning so things may change like what happened yesterday.
Now something interesting took place yesterday when a group of youth including a dear friend who made a small protest in the heart of Mohendessin yesterday , in the famous Mostafa Mahmoud calling citizens to elect “Batman" as president of Egypt.

Batman for president : From Mostafa Mahmoud by Youm 7

The man behind this idea who I do not know his name says that he decided to do this in order to break down tensions in the society due to presidential campaigns. I love how he speaks with that girl from street children and tells her that Batman will solve her problem.
It is hilarious.

@10:33 AM

Two hours have passed and there is recorded turnout in Fayoum and Assuit in Upper Egypt and Behaira in Delta. Ahram gate says Agouza area where I live got low turnout, it is strange thing.
There is moderate turnout in Luxor.

@10:53 AM

Things are calm , again we are speaking about early morning.
Al Badil newspaper published a beautiful report about the 92 years old lady in Maniya who went to vote yesterday for the first time in her life.

@11:00 AM

So I got a tip from activists and observers from Upper Egypt that Shafik and activists spoke to the leaders of tribes in Qena claiming that the revolution will turn the youth there against them and that the Sufis and Christians are going to vote for him. On the other hand the women of Muslim brotherhood go in door to door to convince the ladies to elect Morsi !!

@12:00 PM

A 72 years old pensioner has passed away outside a polling station in El Zahar , Old Cairo when he had a sudden heart attack.
Yesterday An Ahmed Shafik delegate gave birth inside a polling station to a boy she named “Ahmed Shafik” !!
Filed Marshal Tantawy , General Anan , Lt.General Mohamed El Assar are visiting the polling stations in Cairo.
Presidential elections committee will have a press conference tonight to discuss what happened through out the day as well votes count.
And Hakim , our pop star has voted , it is unclear who he voted for.

According to sources both Mohamed Mounir and Amr Diab voted for Hamdeen Sabbahi. I found the news of Diab strange because he made a song for Ahmed Shafik !!
Adel Emam also voted , I bet he voted either for Moussa or Shafik despite he denied publicly that he endorsed Shafik publicly.

Emam in polling station by Jailan Zayan "AFP"

Of course I will not be surprised if he voted for Morsi not because his daughter's father in law is a leading member in MB but because he is a pragmatic person !! This is the first time Emam appears in public after the court's controversial rule to imprison him for defaming Islam !!!!!!!! Emam spoke with AFP and I bet he gave press a lot to discuss today.
Khaled Said's mom Mrs. Laila Marzouk voted today , she voted for Hamdeen Sabbahi.
A friend on twitter told me that the MB ladies are having their door to door campaign in El Hadra district in Alexandria annoying her aunt !!

@1:15 PM

The Presidential elections committee "PEC" has extending the voting period till 9 PM.
Now Mursi, Hamdeen , Abu El Fotouh's campaigns claim that their candidates are advancing till this moment.
Now I would like to share this photo and remember the past in order to see where we heading to in the future

Now a quick look to my family :
My mom , my aunt and myself have elected Abu El Fotouh.
My second aunt and cousin have elected Hamdeen Sabbahi.
My mom's two cousin are going to elect Abu El Fotouh while their sister is going to elected Sabbahi and her son is going to elected Mohamed Morsi.
Many Egyptian families got this diversity when it comes to voting and presidential elections.
Former PM Essam Sharaf hinted out that he did not elect a former regime official which means he did not Moussa or Shafik in a short statement issued on his official Facebook page on Wednesday.

I chose the candidate who believes that what happened was a true popular revolution , he believes that the revolution did not achieve its goals and achieving these goals are his aim and is able to create a national consensus with less polarization

I think this applies more to Abu El Fotouh , national consensus is his power point more than Sabbahi.

@1:48 PM

We do not have official exit polls in Egypt but Righters and Citizenship center issued a field report about exist polls from 5 different governorates “Cairo, Alexandria , Sharkia , Ismailia and Aswan” :

They asked 1627 who they had voted for in the presidential elections on Wednesday and the results came as follows :

Mohamed Morsi : 25.8%
Abdel Moneim Abu El Fotouh : 23.2%
Ahmed Shafik : 20.7%
Moussa : 11.3%
Sabbahi : 9.5%
Other candidates : 4.7%
Nullified their vote : 1.4%
Refused to reveal their candidates : 3.4 %

I do not know if we should trust this poll that gave hope to Abu El Fotouh’s supporters and depressed Moussa’s supporters. I can not take this poll as a concrete example.

@6:48 PM

Ok lots of things happened in the past 5 hours. First I visit the Kommia language school and met the Judge supervising Agouza district and he told me that the votes count will start as soon as the polling station closes its doors and it can start at 10 PM or even 11 PM.
The head of subsidiary commission in Kommia language told me that I can come and attend the count as I have got journalist permit.
The turnout was low , I asked him and he told me it was then "at 5 PM" that yesterday the turnout was bigger.
The number of voters so far that came was close to 3000 till then out of 4650 or something.
The committee was using its third box.
I slept for two hours to wake up on a big fight between Moussa and Shafik after days of crossfire between the two campaigns. Moussa called Shafik and his campaign as liars who spread false elections results reminding us with Shafik's past history with Mubarak regime !!

Moussa asked Shafik to withdraw from his candidacy in his favor where as Shafik fired back and said that Moussa is jealous from his success and he is the one who should withdraw from the race !!
Moussa held a press conference later.

By Matt McBradley

Matt McBradley spoke to Dr. Ahmed Kamel , the media coordinator in Moussa's campaign who told him about an exist poll conducted nationwide in 13000 polling stations and the results were as follow : Morsi "25%" , Moussa "23%" , Shafiq"18%" , Sabbahi "16%" and Abu El Fotouh "15%"
Now according to all exist polls Mohamed Morsi is in the lead , the difference is in the second place.

@7:22 PM

The turnout according to several eye witnesses in several governorates and areas is increasing compared to the morning and it expected thing after the sunset.

According to some expectations the turnout may reach between 40%-50%.

Now these are very interesting tweets by Military secrets account on twitter that follows unofficially the army.

@9:22 PM

Votes count have started from 22 minutes ago officially in Egypt. The votes count has started in Cairo , Qena, Mansoura, Matrouh , Maniya , New Valley and North Sinai.

I am so nervous.

By the way in those 20 minutes I went to the nearest polling station to my house and tried to attend the count using my reporter's permit but I failed as I should have been inside the polling station before closing the doors. The good thing I know where the central electoral commission of my area and insh Allah I will head there in early morning.

Now The reformists judges trend in Egypt launched a website called "The parallel elections commission" that will report results directly from subsidiary polling stations.

I feel that I am living the night of knowing my third secondary year in school , I remember that night. Millions of Egyptians will not sleep tonight for sure.

@9:54 PM

And the count is on , it is extremely exciting. Some polling stations air its vote count on TV. Now on twitter tweeps from all over the country share the preliminary results from the polling stations. You can follow them on #egyelections.

One thing for sure Mohamed Morsi is in the lead

@11:01 PM

The count is on and twitter is on fire so are my nerves thus I will not share any preliminary result because we are speaking about over 10,000 polling stations in the country.