Voting commences in 2019 Presidential Election
November 16, 2019 07:34 am
Voting for the 2019 Presidential Election is currently underway at 12,845 polling centers across the island.
Voting commenced at 7.00 a.m. this morning and will come to an end at 5.00 p.m.
A total of 15,992,096 persons are eligible to vote at the election today which will elect the 7th President of Sri Lanka.
Meanwhile the Returning Officers for electoral districts say that all preparation have been completed for the voting and that registered voters have already started turning up.
Even before polling stations opened, dozens of people were seen queueing up outside schools and public buildings where the 12,600 polling booths were set up.
Chairman of the Election Commission Mahinda Deshapriya urged voters to visit polling centers early to exercise their franchise while also calling on them to adhere to election laws.
Speaking on the release of election results, Deshapriya said the first postal voting result is expected to be released between 10.00 pm and 12.00 am tonight and that the first result could most likely be Ratnapura postal voting results.
However, you can never be sure, since the ballot paper is much longer this time and since counting will only be commenced at 5.30 pm in the evening, it could be past midnight as well, he said.
Deshapriya said they are confident that by 8.00 am on Monday (18), 80-90% of the results out of the 160 electoral divisions could be released.
He added that they also expect to start releasing results from 6.00 pm today (16).
Ada Derana will bring you every detail of Presidential Election 2019 until the release of its final results. The general public can catch the latest updates of the election via Ada Derana’s trilingual news websites, TV Derana, Ada Derana 24 ((Dialog TV & Peo TV), FM Derana as well as the Ada Derana breaking news SMS alert service.
Ada Derana 24’s Special election day coverage, ‘Sri Lanka Decides’, will be broadcast 24 hours with a revolutionary visual experience. Following the main news bulletin at 6.55 pm this evening, you can stay tuned to ‘Sri Lanka Decides Night Live’ for a much broader coverage on the election.
