Presidential election day 2: Payouts, artificial crowds mask low voter turnout

On the second day of domestic voting in the 2023 presidential election, Mada Masr correspondents toured several electoral districts in Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Monufiya, and Matrouh. Large queues primarily made up of “rallying” teams affiliated with the Nation’s Future Party could be seen outside some polling stations, masking low voter turnout in those areas.

Students below the voting age, as well as students from Jordan and Syria, stood outside polling stations in the Sayeda Zeinab district to boost turnout optics. They told Mada Masr that they had been brought in from three different schools by a physical education teacher to make the polling station appear crowded.

Representatives of the state-aligned Nation’s Future Party and Homeland Defenders Party were present outside the majority of polling stations, where they continued to facilitate payments and transportation to drive up voter turnout, as Mada Masr reported yesterday. They set up tents and played patriotic songs under the pretext of helping citizens locate their subcommittees and their electoral numbers.

At a polling station at a primary school in the Sayeda Zeinab neighborhood, members of the Nation’s Future Party secretariat stood outside the exit door designated for voters handing out blank coupons after verifying the ink stain on their fingers, which can be exchanged for LE200 after 6 pm.

This was confirmed to Mada Masr by a member of the party who was designated to distribute and stamp the coupons after verifying the phosphoric ink on voters’ fingers in the Nozha neighborhood in Cairo. Each voter received LE200 from the party’s headquarters.

In the Heliopolis electoral district, Mada Masr correspondents observed a pattern of staged crowds at several polling stations. Long lines of people stood in front of the polling station from the start to the end of voting hours in exchange for three meals throughout the day.

One of those standing in line outside the Martyr Ahmed Amin Ashmawy School in Heliopolis told Mada Masr that he and his colleagues from a nearby printing press were forced to participate in this mock crowd without any incentives. He expressed frustration over his bad luck, having spent the entire day in line without receiving any financial compensation, while others voted within minutes and walked away with a coupon worth LE200.

At another polling station in Heliopolis at the Martyr Hazem Mahmoud Azab School, a voter told Mada Masr that they received LE200 from the headquarters of the Mostafa al-Sallab charitable foundation on Ismail Ramzi street adjacent to the Heliopolis police department. Meanwhile, one of the workers responsible for the Mostafa al-Sallab foundation confirmed that the foundation will remain closed throughout the election and that the headquarters are currently under the control of the Nation’s Future Party, which is responsible for distributing the LE200.

According to two individuals working in a tent set up by the Nation’s Future Party near the Gamal Eddin al-Afghani mosque in Gamea Square in Heliopolis, coupons can be obtained at tents outside polling stations in the area, such as the one outside the Martyr Hazem Mahmoud Azab School, where the coupons are stamped after voting.

In one of the villages of the Kerdasa region in Giza, a voter told Mada Masr that after casting her vote, she received a bag on Monday containing one kilogram of rice, one kilogram of pasta, one kilogram of sugar, a half-liter bottle of oil and a bottle of tomato paste.

The voter explained that some residents of the area, “who worked in the elections,” gathered near her polling station to hand out a stamped coupon to those who voted upon verification. They told her that she could use the coupon to receive a bag of food from nearby headquarters. The voter added that one of her acquaintances colored his finger with ink after sticking it to another voter’s finger in front of the polling station to obtain a coupon without voting.

She also mentioned that the distributed bags were donated by prominent individuals in the village, including the mayor and MP Khaled Tayea.

Tayea is the Nation’s Future Party assistant secretary in Giza. He cast his vote on Tuesday at the Martyr Youssef Anwar School in Kerdasa, where he arrived in a musical procession, according to Al-Bawaba, which quoted him as expressing his intention to visit the Kerdasa voting centers “to follow up on the electoral process, assist the masses and provide facilitations for them.”

At the polling stations in the Attarin and Agami neighborhoods in Alexandria, both the Nation’s Future Party and Homeland Defenders Party adopted the same plan, which involves hiring a number of citizens to remain “stationed” outside empty committees to create an artificial crowd for the journalists and international organizations monitoring the stations.

Several participants in those staged crowds told Mada Masr that an agreement had been made with them to be consistently present in front of the polling stations in exchange for LE150 and a food coupon worth LE100.

In Matrouh, teachers affiliated with the governorate’s Education Ministry Directorate stood inside polling stations to record the names of teachers who attended to vote following threats from the governorate’s deputy education minister that he would impose pay cuts, transfer teachers to a farther school, or halt promotions for those who do not vote, according to one of the teachers who spoke to Mada Masr.

In Monufiya, a voter in one of the villages of the Shohada electoral district told Mada Masr that their polling stations witnessed a low turnout, with participation limited to acquaintances of the organizers from the Nation’s Future Party or those who were seeking to obtain the LE200 or a box containing bags of sugar, rice, lentils, beans and a bottle of oil.

Ahmed Bendari, the head of the presidential election’s central operations room, stated in a press conference on Tuesday that 45 percent of registered voters in the database, approximately 30 million people, had cast their votes so far. According to Bendari, this is larger than expected and there were ballot shortages at some polling stations, particularly those catering to voters coming from outside governorates, and measures were taken to supply the stations with additional ballots and boxes.

On the sidelines of his visit to one of the committees in Fayoum, candidate Hazem Omar commented, “There is a significant turnout because the competition is fierce. Whenever there is strong competition, we witness a greater turnout from citizens.”