The Egyptian Presidental Run-Off Results.

The results of Egypt's Presidential run-off vote that was held across Saturday June 16th (16/6/12) and Sunday June 17th (17/6/12) were supposed to be released today (21/6/12). However they have been delayed indefinitely.

The main reason for this delay is that between them the two candidates, Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafik have made some 400 complaints of irregularities to the electoral commission. These range from the frankly stupid such as a woman who was arrested for attempting the smuggle a blank ballot paper out of a polling station to complaints that are significant but could have been caused by simple human error such as a books of ballot papers going missing and dead people showing up electoral registers. There are also much more serious complaints such a ballot papers arriving at polling stations with one candidate already selected and the use of violence and the threat of violence against both supporters of Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafik. The accusation of violent intimidation of Shaifk supporters has been corroborated by election observers working for the Carter Foundation.

To give you an idea of how long it will take the electoral commission to investigate all these claims it took me the best part part of two hours today to simply read through the list of half of the complaints made by the Morsi campaign. However the rumour is that the electoral commission should be able to complete it's investigations and make the results available in the next few days.

The result itself will be quite hard to predict with the Morsi campaign claiming that their candidate won with 52% of the vote while the Shafik campaign claims that their candidate won with 51% of the vote. The figure I'm interested in though is the voter turnout because this will help explain whether the result reflects the will of the majority of the Egyptian people or simply the will of a small minority who were motivated to vote.