Egyptian officials count the ballots at a polling station in a school of the village of Shebin El Kom in the northern Nile delta province of Menoufia, on April 22, 2019 AFP
Egypt's National Elections Authority (NEA) announced on Tuesday that Egyptians have voted to pass a number of constitutional amendments in a public referendum, with 88.83% voting in favour.
Head of the NEA Lashin Ibrahim told a press conference that the turnout of voters stood at 27,193,593 -- including both expats and local voters -- constituting 44.33 percent of 61,344,503 eligible voters.
Ibrahim said there were 26,362,421 valid votes, standing at 96.94 percent, while 831,172 votes were void (3.06 percent).
The breakdown of the votes were announced by Ibrahim as follows:
Yes vote: 23,416,741 (88.83 percent)
No vote: 2,945,680 (11.17 percent)
Ibrahim said the vote count was "transparent and monitored by the media, and the non-governmental organisations that followed the operation."
The referendum was held in 10,878 polling stations and 13,919 committees, while the number of judges supervising the referendum was about 20,000 from different judicial bodies, assisted by some 120,000 employees all over Egyptian governorates.
Voting for Egyptians abroad lasted for three days, from Friday to Sunday, in 140 polling stations located in Egyptian consulates and embassies in 120 countries.
The vote in Egypt itself took place from Saturday to Monday.
Voters were asked to vote yes or no on a package of 14 amendments to the 2014 constitution.
The amendments had been overwhelmingly approved by parliament last week, with 531 out of 596 members voting in favour, 22 voting against and one abstention.
The amendments include changing the length of presidential terms from four to six years.
They also extend the second term of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, which is set to end in 2022, by two years, and allow him to run for office for another term in 2024.
The amendments also allocate a quarter of the seats in parliament to women.
They also give the president new powers to appoint members of the judiciary, and would create a second chamber of parliament (the Senate), with one-third of its members to be appointed by the president, and re-introduce the post of vice president.
El-Sisi was first elected president in 2014 and was re-elected last year in a landslide victory wherein he secured 97 percent of the vote.
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