New Democracy extends deadline for leadership ballot amid strong turnout
Voting in New Democracy’s leadership ballot continue well beyond the 7 p.m. deadline on Sunday.
The party’s electoral committee decided to extend the deadline until 8 p.m. or until everyone queuing to vote had a chance to cast their ballot after the turnout was higher than expected.
Sources told Kathimerini journalist Giorgos Terzis that some 375,000 people had cast ballots. At one stage it had been expected that the party might struggle to attract around 300,000 voters.
The delay in the voting process means that the results were also expected later on Sunday than initially expected. For one of the four candidates taking part – former interim leader Evangelos Meimarakis, Central Macedonia Governor Apostolos Tzitzicostas and ex-ministers Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Adonis Georgiadis- to be declared an outright winner, he would have to take more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round.
Otherwise, a run-off vote will be held on Sunday, January 10, between the candidates that place first and second.
The ballot took place largely without hitches but a technical problem did cause a brief delay in the procedure in the evening. The conservatives had handed the contract for the vote counting system to Vodafone after the previous IT company they chose was unable to get its software to function on the original date for the ballot, which was November 22.
