Voting for president on Friday took place in Iran, where a lone reformist was trying to make a breakthrough against a field of rival conservative candidates.
In the election held following President Ebrahim Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash last month, about 61 million Iranians are eligible to cast their votes.
The polls are expected to stay open until 6:00 p.m. (1430 GMT), but voting hours may be extended as in previous elections. Official results are anticipated by Sunday, with preliminary projections due by Saturday morning.
For the first time in Iranian electoral history, a runoff vote was required in 2005; if no candidate receives 50% of the vote, there will be a second round on July 5. The Guardian Council, which vets candidates, has approved Masoud Pezeshkian, the lone reformist, ultraconservative former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, and conservative parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf as the front-runners.
Two ultraconservatives, Raisi’s former vice president Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi and Tehran mayor Alireza Zakani, withdrew from the race on election eve, leaving only the cleric Mostafa Pourmohammadi.
58,640 polling places nationwide, primarily in schools and mosques, were open for voting. The supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared as he cast his ballot shortly after the polls opened, “Election day is a day of joy and happiness for us Iranians.” “We encourage our dear people to take the voting issue seriously and participate.
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