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By Libya Herald staff.
Tripoli, 25 June 2014:
The High National Elections Commission (HNEC) has said 630,000 voters had cast . . .[restrict]their ballots today at the end of voting to the House of Representatives.
Speaking at a press conference at HNEC headquarters, HNEC head Emad Al-Sayeh told reporters that 45 percent of the country’s 1.5 million registered voters had taken part in the elections which he said marked a “historical occasion”.
Sayeh said between ten to 15 seats in the House of Representatives would be left vacant by voting disruptions in Derna, Murzuk, Kufra and Al-Jmail. The HNEC head said the empty seats would not prevent the new parliament from sitting as there would still be sufficient deputies to constitute a quorum. He said according to electoral law HNEC would have 48 hours to declare the date for a rerun of elections in the four areas and that the second round of voting would be held within seven days from today.
Sayeh also addressed violence today in Benghazi which he said had forced one polling station to close. He said, however, that the clashes had not affected the electoral process and that HNEC had “nothing to do with battles that did not concern them”.
The HNEC head said the first preliminary results from today’s vote would be available tomorrow and that complete preliminary results would be available in two days. He said final results, including the results of any appeals, would be published by 15 July.
Thanking his HNEC colleagues for their efforts, Sayeh said that, given the broad success of the elections, the few instances in which security breaches had occurred were “acceptable given the difficult conditions”.
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