The queues formed early and quickly at polling stations across Egypt on Monday, as voters cast their ballots in the first parliamentary elections since the fall of former president Hosni Mubarak in February. 
  
  
  
 Large numbers of registered voters turned out on the first day of the three-stage election process, with lines snaking around polling centres under the watchful eye of military soldiers. 
  
 In the capital, Cairo, thousands of voters flocked to schools in the neighbourhoods of Zamalek, Nasr City and Maadi - among others - well before they opened at 8am, to stake their place in line. 
  
 "I've been waiting since 7am [local time]," one voter told Al Jazeera at a polling station in the working-class neighbourhood of Shubra, where hundreds of voters were delayed by the late arrival of ballot papers. 
  
 Logistical problems continued to plague many polling stations across the country, with some voters reporting that stations had not opened more than an hour after the time scheduled, as ink used to mark voters' fingers had not arrived. 
  
  
  
 "The two problems are this, one, ballot papers arriving very late, secondly, judges are arriving very late [and] some not even turning up," Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros, reporting from Shubra, said. 
  
  
  
 Additionally, a ban on campaigning at polling stations had been broken, with members of parties handing out pamphlets and banners steps away from the ballot box. 
  
 Voter enthusiasm 
  
  
  
 Despite the problems, many voters expressed enthusiasm for what they said they hoped would be Egypt's first truly free and fair election. 
  
  
  
 "This is the first real vote," said one voter at a polling station in central Cairo who identified himself as Abdullah. 
  
  
  
 He proudly displayed his ink-stained finger indicating he had voted, as he handed out flyers promoting the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party outside the polling station. 
  
  
  
 "Mubarak erased them," he said of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose political wing is the The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). "Now they have freedom. Even the name of the party is freedom and justice." 
  
  
  
 Meanwhile in Assiut, one of the most significant governorates in the Upper Egypt region, there appeared to be an exceptionally high turnout by the standards of the country's previous votes. 
  
  
  
 "The lines have not stopped outside the polling centres," Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh reported from Assiut. "If we're judging by the turnout, this has been by all accounts a success." 
  
 Women vote in force 
  
  
  
 Women were turning out in high numbers, unusual for such a conservative region, Rageh said. 
  
  
  
 There were no signs of violence or coercion, she reported, but there were campaign violations as some parties continued to campaign even as voting was underway. Poor organisation by authorities was also an issue, our correspondent said. 
  
 Voters in the northern city of Alexandria began arriving at polling stations not long after sunrise. 
  
  
  
 At the Sayyid Mohammed Korayib girls school in the Smouha district, women began queuing shortly after 7am at the female entrance, and by 8am, there were more than 100 waiting in line, with longer queues forming at other polling stations and male entrances around the corner. 
  
 Armed navy troops in blue helmets guarded the stations, and unarmed police officers directed voters once they entered. 
  
  
  
 Poll workers opened the stations shortly after 9am, around an hour after the voting was scheduled to begin, but there was no sign of anger among the calm crowds, who seemed anxious only to get inside. 
  
  
  
 "The people all want elections, all Egyptians want them, except maybe those who started the revolution and are protesting in Tahrir," said Fathiya Abdel Aal, an employee of the finance ministry's customs department. 
  
  
  
 "We don't condone the violence that they are being exposed to but we must have stability, we simply must." 
  
  
  
 Aal said she had faith in God and in Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the head of the ruling military council, and that she had not found the voting process difficult to understand, as many feared. 
  
  
  
 Once the doors opened, the process appeared to go smoothly. Military guards allowed maintained a smooth flow of voters, and civilian poll workers were prepared with information and voter lists. 
  
 Fears over ballots 
  
  
  
 In Sayyid Korayib, voters were assigned one of four classrooms, each staffed by a judge and poll workers, who wore their identification cards on arm bands. 
  
  
  
 Mohamed Aboul Ela, a lower criminal court judge supervising the vote in one room, said the voting had gone well and he did not foresee any problems. 
  
  
  
  
  
 Jamal Elshayyal reports from an Alexandria polling station 
  
 Some activists and party workers had expressed concern recently when voting was extended to two days, meaning ballot boxes would remain in the overnight custody of either the interior ministry or the military, neither of which is a wholly trusted institution at this point. 
  
 But Aboul Ela said he would seal both the ballot boxes and the entrances to the classroom and require the military and police commanders to sign forms entrusting the ballots to them. 
  
  
  
 If the seals were broken, he would nullify the vote, he said. 
  
  
  
 Across central Alexandria, brief downpours did not seem to dampen turnout, with long lines of men and women snaking out of nearly every polling place. 
  
  
  
 The FJP made its presence felt throughout the city. 
  
 FJP workers could be seen advising voters on how the ballots had been organised while dressed in hats, pins and vests emblazoned with the scales of justice, the group's distinctive symbol. 
  
  
  
 The workers handed out tiny calendars bearing the party's symbol and name, and erected tents - covered with party banners - where men with laptops helped voters learn their unique voting number and location, while also providing them with party flyers. 
  
  
  
 First stage 
  
  
  
 Voters are choosing 168 of the 498 deputies, which will form the new lower house of parliament. The vote is only the first stage in an election timetable which lasts until March 2012 and covers two houses of parliament. 
  
  
  
 In this round, some of Egypt's most populous areas will vote, including Cairo, Alexandria, Assiut, Port Said and Luxor. 
  
  
  
  
  
 "I am boycotting because I believe it is a circus," - Hossam el-Hamalawy, Egyptian blogger 
  
  
  
 More than 50 political parties are contesting the elections, along with thousands of candidates running as independents. 
  
  
  
 But the preparations were marred by a new wave of demonstrations, as protesters continued to occupy Cairo's Tahrir Square to demand the military council that replaced Mubarak hand power to a civilian government. 
  
  
  
 Some activists called for a boycott of the vote before it began. 
  
  
  
 "I am boycotting because I believe it is a circus," Hossam el-Hamalawy, an Egyptian blogger and activist, told Al Jazeera. 
  
  
  
 "You cannot have clean elections while the police force which has not been purged is in charge of securing the ballot boxes. 
  
  
  
 "You have to settle the battle in the streets, then you settle it in the ballot boxes. We have to win our occupation in Tahrir Square first." 
  
 - Malika Bilal reported from Cairo; Evan Hill reported from Alexandria ||||| Egyptians came out to vote in record numbers, defying widespread predictions of violence and chaos and fears that the country was yet to break free from three stagnant decades of dictatorship. 
  
 Polls were kept open two hours past their scheduled closing time to allow long queues of people at polling stations throughout Cairo to cast their ballots. The high turnout followed 10 days of resurgent protests in the capital that had threatened to overshadow the election. 
  
 Egypt's military rulers and the high election commission, which is supervising the voting, reported no major violations or security incidents during the historic vote – the first free parliamentary ballot for more than 80 years. 
  
 However, some candidates are claiming irregularities outside several booths, which they allege will boost votes for the Muslim Brotherhood, the bloc likely to do best when the first round of votes in a three-stage process are counted . 
  
 The scene of the renewed uprising, Tahrir Square, was largely empty as long queues snaked outside schools and government offices around the city. Many of the demonstrators who had gathered in the square to demand the immediate departure of the supreme council of the armed forces (Scaf), the military junta that took power when President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in January, had urged a boycott of the election, claiming it was being set up to fail. 
  
 However, in those neighbourhoods where support for the largely liberal Tahrir movement was strongest, few people appeared to have listened. "I came to vote because it is an opportunity that we can't miss," said Hala Boutros, waiting in a line of at least 3,000 other women in the affluent Zamalek area. "It could take four hours, it could take more. We will wait here as long as the line moves." 
  
 And move it did – slowly – throughout a well-mannered and patient day in an area that was widely predicted to stay at home, fearing that a still immature political system could not support a democratic transition in the nine troubled months since Mubarak was removed from power. 
  
 "For 30 years my parents' generation said they were denied a voice," said Mona el-Eltawy, also in the women's queue in Zamalek. "So I've come here on behalf of my family. If we don't vote we lose." 
  
 Across the Nile in the impoverished Bulaq Abu Ela area, a muddy brown street outside a local schoolyard was being used for an impromptu town hall meeting by supporters from all blocs, who defied bans on handing out flyers to arriving voters. "It means a lot to be here," said one man, who appeared confused by the touts bidding for his vote. "I can vote for who I want to, and I have faith that the process will be fair." 
  
 The high election commission said at a media conference it was not alarmed by the breach of the ban on campaigning, or distributing flyers within 48 hours of the poll. It had received numerous complaints about the breaches, which are thought to have been widespread and by all parties. 
  
 The Guardian witnessed a number of violations, including the distribution of candidate fliers inside the Gizr al-Suez polling station and the use of party delegates to "help" voters understand their ballot papers. 
  
 Amr Hamzawy, a founder and candidate of the liberal Egypt Freedom party, said he was impressed by the long queues at Gizr al-Suez, but complained of violations. 
  
 "It's primarily coming from the Muslim Brotherhood who have been violating the rules and regulations of the high elections commission," he said. "But we are reporting all these irregularities to authorities. Today I feel confident that this was the right thing to do, and I feel very hopeful." 
  
 Dina Magdy, 26, a dentist in Gizr al-Suez, said: "[This is] why I joined the 25 January revolution, and it's why I'm casting a ballot now. This polling station is an extension of Tahrir, not a rival to it," she said. "Voting whilst Scaf is in power isn't a problem – the generals are the best we've got right now." 
  
 Salwa Muhanna, a retired administrative secretary, said: "I'm very excited, I've never done anything like this before. Of course it's not perfect, but this is the kind of step forward for our country that I've dreamed of all my life. It's a historic moment for us and for the region, and no one can take that away. 
  
 "I voted for [liberal] Amr Hamzawy as he is young and we need a new generation of politicians to solve this country's problems. We must resist the threat of the Salafists and the Brotherhood." 
  
 The Muslim Brotherhood is widely expected to emerge from the vote as a powerhouse in post-Mubarak Egypt. The group's ascent has alarmed liberals and supporters of the military regime, who fear that it will attempt to remake Egyptian society along Islamic lines. 
  
 The elections are finally being held following a referendum in March that approved a series of constitutional amendments and endorsed the junta-sponsored transition timetable that should have seen a parliamentary vote take place by September at the latest. As transition deadlines slipped, patience among many Egyptians ebbed and a fear grew that the Scaf was instead trying to hang on to power. The waning trust led to the reoccupation of Tahrir Square and fears that vote would not take place. 
  
 Preliminary results are expected later this week. Two further rounds of voting will be held in other areas of Egypt, the last on 3 January, before a 498-member lower house of parliament is elected. Its main task will be to form a committee to draft Egypt's new constitution, which promises to be a bitterly contested blueprint for the future. 
  
 Egypt's liberals fear the Muslim Brotherhood will use its potential new political powerbase to usher the country away from a civil democracy to a society that defers to Islamic sharia law. 
  
 A Muslim Brotherhood member outside the Bulaq Abu Ela polling station said: "They should not fear us. This is what God wants." |||||

Write a summary.
– Egypt's first free election in more than 80 years went smoothly today despite massive turnout that kept polls open 2 hours later than planned, the Guardian reports. Candidates made some accusations of tampering after campaigners broke the rules, handing out pamphlets near voting booths, or "helping" voters understand their ballots—but breaches were minor compared to dire predictions that followed days of deadly rioting in Cairo. (See photos from the election.) Voters did face organizational hiccups, like polling stations that opened late or never opened at all, Al Jazeera reports. And with voting continuing tomorrow, activists fear ballot boxes will be unsafe in the overnight custody of the military or the interior ministry. Some protesters boycotted the vote entirely, saying the military will remain too powerful after parliament is elected. But on the upside, women turned out in droves today. "For 30 years my parents' generation said they were denied a voice," said a woman waiting in line. "So I've come here on behalf of my family. If we don't vote we lose."