Gamal

Election day in Mansoura

While police officers used batons and tear gas to disperse a group of more than 1,000 people trying to observe the vote-counting process in the working-class Nile Delta town of Mahalla an hour down the road, election day in Mansoura reflected the government’s slightly more subtle but equally effective methods of manipulating the vote in Egypt.

Representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, a technically banned Islamist group that is nothing if not media savvy, had told us repeatedly that Mansoura would be "hot,” so we arrived the night before to get an early start.