Confusion greets Egypt's democratic experiment

In the Khaled bin Walid school in the Cairo suburb of Shubra al-Khima, two judges debated which ink they were supposed to ask voters to dip their finger in.

"Which one is it, red or blue? It's the red one, isn't it?" judge Mahmud Darwish asked his colleague.

"No, I think the red one comes off too easily," the other replied.

Two polling station employees proudly wearing badges of incumbent President Hosni Mubarak manned computers set up outside to guide voters to the right booth.

Dozens of Egyptians clustered around the small table and shouted out their names. Eventually some of them were given a booth number scribbled on a small piece of paper bearing Mubarak's campaign portrait.

At another station in the same suburb, an AFP correspondent saw security forces inside a polling station, despite an interior ministry pledge that police would enter only if asked to do so by the duty judge.

In the troubled Sinai peninsula in the north of the country, polling was marred by a lack of information over where to vote.

"I am tired. Since this morning, I have been hopping from one polling station to another and I have no idea where I'm supposed to vote," said 57-year-old Ismail Ali from the city of Ismailiya.

In Upper Egypt, an AFP correspondent reported widespread confusion as judges expelled party delegates from their polling stations, thus discouraging many voters from casting their ballot.