Voting in Tunisia's second presidential election continues straight from the people since the revolution, and a member of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) predicted that the results of the vote would be clear at night or tomorrow morning, with the results officially announced on Tuesday.

The majority of the more than 13,000 polling stations opened on schedule, and the voting process was smooth, he said.

The electoral commission announced at a press conference that the turnout recorded an hour after the opening of polling stations reached 1.6%, while the percentage of voters outside Tunisia reached 10.8%.

To secure the electoral process, about 70,000 security personnel were deployed around polling stations, most of which opened in the capital without much delay at 8 am local time (0700 GMT).

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High Authority
The head of the commission, Nabil Pfon, said in a press conference today that about three hundred polling stations in the border areas with Libya and Algeria were delayed for security reasons, as they opened two hours after the opening of polling stations throughout Tunisia.

Most Tunisians are counting on broad participation to consolidate the democratic process and fulfill their demands in the second presidential election after the 2011 revolution that ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

He expected a member of the Independent High Electoral Commission Adel al-Princi to be clear features of the results of the vote today late Sunday night or early Monday, to be announced the final results after 48 hours of voting.

The number of Tunisian voters is more than seven million, including 400,000 registered abroad. Presidential elections are held in two rounds if no candidate receives more than half of the votes in the first round.

Presidential candidates Youssef Chahed (right) and Abdel Fattah Moro vote (Reuters)

Leading candidates
Among the 26 most prominent candidates for the election are Prime Minister Youssef Chahed, businessman Nabil Karoui, Abdel Fattah Moro, vice-president of the Ennahda party, and outgoing Defense Minister Abdel Karim Zubeidi.

Given the large number of candidates for Tunisia's presidencies, today's elections could yield very close results. The difference in votes is not much between the two candidates in the run-off scheduled for October 13th and the other candidates.

The date for the elections was postponed after the death of President Essebsi in late July.

The president of Tunisia has direct control over foreign and defense policy, while most of the other files are handled by the prime minister, chosen by parliament. Because of this limited role, many candidates emphasized their security policies.

In a related context, the correspondent of Al-Jazeera in Tunisia hopes and people that the authorities supervising the elections took extraordinary measures because of the coincidence of the polling day with the second day of the electoral campaign for the legislative elections, in order to prevent overlap between the two campaigns, and to prevent the use of campaigns of candidates for legislative elections to propagate candidates to the presidential elections.