According to Egypt’s official news agency, MENA, members of the Carter Center praised the Egyptian government on Friday for steps taken to ensure violations did not occur during presidential voting. This was in contrast to what most members at the centre witnessed during last year’s parliamentary elections.

Observers from the Carter Center said that they consider this electoral process as much more organised and that polling had been smooth in comparison to what they saw last year at polling stations during parliamentary elections in Alexandria.

The Carter Center pointed out that committee members were extremely organised.

Once the elections are completed, the Carter Center says they will shortly release a comprehensive report of all aspects of the electoral process of the first round of polling which came to a close on Thursday evening.

With voting results still incomplete, it is widely expected that no candidate won a majority of 50 per cent, which would, in turn mean a runoff election between the top two candidates.

The Carter Center is a US-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) working in democracy-promotion. It is one of three foreign NGOs that were authorised by Egypt's Supreme Presidential Electoral Commission (SPEC) to observe the polling process and vote-counting procedures.