UPDATE 2 - Voting ends in Iran's snap presidential election

CHANGES HEADLINE, DECK, LEDE, ADDS DETAILS

By Syed Zafar Mehdi and Ahmet Dursun

TEHRAN, Iran (AA) - The 14th presidential elections in Iran have officially concluded after an 18-hour voting process.

A spokesperson for Iran's election headquarters, Mohsen Eslami, said the process concluded at midnight local time.

Polling began at 8 a.m. Friday and was supposed to end at 6 p.m., in line with the constitutional norm of a 10-hour voting period.

But the Interior Ministry, which supervises the election, extended the voting three times to allow more voters to cast ballots.

Four candidates -- Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Saeed Jalili, Masoud Pezeshkian and Mostafa Pourmohammadi -- are vying for the presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran following the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month.

An estimated 64 million voters in Iran are eligible to vote in the election, the majority of whom are young. In the 2021 presidential election, 59.3 million were eligible to vote.

A total of 58,640 polling stations were set up across the country to facilitate the voting process, more than 6,000 of which were in Tehran.

Outside the country, the Foreign Ministry designated 344 overseas polling stations for Iranians to exercise their franchise, except in Canada, which did not allow it.

Voter turnout is likely to be higher than in the presidential election in 2021, as voters formed long queues in front of polling stations in Tehran and other cities across the country.

The 2021 election, when Raisi won by a landslide, witnessed a record-low voter turnout of 49%.

The final results are expected to be announced Saturday afternoon, according to officials, but vote counting started immediately after polls closed.

Three of the four candidates -- conservatives Qalibaf and Jalili, and reformist Pezeshkian -- are locked in a tight contest, according to independent observers, with a high likelihood of the election going to a run-off.

If none of the hopefuls secure more than 50% of the vote, the second round will be held July 5, when the two candidates with the highest number of votes will face off.