Polling stations opened Saturday throughout the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for voting in municipal elections 3rd session, the first in which women are allowed to vote and run as candidates. As many as 1,486,477 female and male voters will cast votes to choose 6,440 two-sex candidates in the municipal elections which will close at 05:00 p.m. today. Each voter casts one vote only in his electoral center and will not be allowed to vote for other candidates in his college or in the voting stations. A voter will have to show his national card and fill a special voter form to the voting official who will make sure of his identity, check whether he/she is registered in the election register book. Afterwards, the voter follows voting procedure in a top confidential way. Chairman of the elections' Executive Committee Eng. Judai bin Nahar Al-Gahtani, spokesman of the municipal elections, said in a press conference today to announce the kick off of the process throughout the Kingdom that 235 candidates, out of them nine women, were disqualified during the campaigning period which lasted for 12 days and ended last Thursday for having violated the election regulations. He noted that regulations prevent lobbying on tribal or regional bases, citing a penalty starting with disqualification and a SR50,000 fine for he/she who was found breaching the regulation. Turnout for municipal elections is usually expected as low compared to other types of elections, he said, citing that most of the population in Saudi Arabia belong to less than 18 years old category and some categories, like service men, governors, chiefs of centers, tribal leaders, judicial officials are not allowed to cast votes. Al-Gahrani added that females participation rate amounted to %24 out of all new registers in this session, considering it a reasonable turnout, wishing it would have been higher. He said results would be announced on Sunday afternoon via the elections website. In local committees as well as small committees, direct counting and fast result release will be accessible than in bigger centers, he added. He said that municipal councils appointed members will be announced once the current voting phase is completed, explaining that the member-appointing procedure is meant to relinquish the councils with specialists, had direct elections have not provided needed professionals. Al-Gahtani said the current session will start on 23 Rabi's Awal (current month) for four years. He reported that there are 1330 electoral committees taking part in this election process who are assigned to forward their notes on the process, citing minor notes made so far as the mechanism of election was developed based on the past two experiments. Following the conference, the media was briefed on the voting process, including vote checking, polling, box opening and sealing, vote sorting out and counting, result announcing and allowed to take photos of the election station galleries.
