CAIRO: Egyptians voted Monday in runoff contests for parliamentary seats, with the Muslim Brotherhood’s party trying to extend its lead over hard-line Islamists and liberal parties in a political landscape redrawn by the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party is set to take the most seats in Egypt’s first free elections in six decades, bolstering its hand in any struggle with the ruling army council for influence over the most populous Arab nation.

The Brotherhood, banned from politics until an uprising ended Mubarak’s 30-year rule on Feb. 11, said after the first-round vote that everyone should “accept the will of the people.”

Its stiffest competition came from the ultra-conservative Salafist Al-Nur Party. Alexandria, Egypt’s second city, was expected to see some of the tightest races between the two parties in the run-off votes for individual candidates.

“The Brotherhood will win, we know them. The Salafists are new to us and we don’t know what they will do,” said Walid Mohammad, 30, a quality controller at a pharmaceutical factory in Alexandria.

“The competition won’t weaken either of them. The most important thing is that the winners rule us by Islam,” he added.

The phased election that runs until January is part of a promised transition from military to civilian rule in July after a presidential election in June.

The head of the election committee, Abdul-Moez Ibrahim, had put the turnout in last week’s voting at 62 percent, but Monday he told a news conference the figure had been revised to 52 percent, blaming a counting error.

Later an administrative court ruled results for one of four constituencies in the capital Cairo were void. Judges overseeing the elections there had left their posts to protest against conditions in polling stations, where 75 ballot boxes were damaged and 15 went missing.

The elections committee has pledged to hold fresh votes in areas where courts declared results inadmissible.

The appeal of Islamist parties derives partly from perceptions that they are less corrupt due to their religious principles, and partly because those principles strike a deep chord in a conservative, poorly educated society.

A Pew Global Attitudes Project report released a year ago found that about four-fifths of Egyptians favored Islamic punishments such as stoning for adultery, whippings and severing hands for theft, and death for those who leave Islam.

In Port Said at the northern end of the Suez Canal, some seemed to be rethinking after last week’s Islamist gains.

“I came to vote for the independent candidate. I reject the Salafists because they did nothing for Port Said. I’m worried about Islamists controlling Port Said’s seats after they won the voting for lists,” said Medhat al-Sayyed, 43.

FJP campaign workers drove around Alexandria in mini-buses canvassing for votes. They and their Salafist counterparts handed out flyers for their candidates, in violation of election rules.

When Al-Nur campaigners began distributing flyers at one Alexandria polling station, an army officer told them to leave. At other polling stations, Islamist campaign workers with laptops offered assistance to voters, as in last week’s polls.

In Cairo, Jihan Moussa, 39, a veiled pharmacist, said she had voted for the Egyptian Bloc which she described as centrist. “I am against any party based on religion,” she added.

The rise of Salafists has alarmed many Egyptians, including a 10 percent Christian minority, because of their view that a strict Shariah (Islamic law) should govern all aspects of Egyptian society.

The Brotherhood is wary of allying with Salafists, who only recently ventured from preaching into politics.

Al-Nur Party leader Emad Abdel-Ghaffour made it clear he would not play second fiddle to the Brotherhood.

“We hate being followers,” Ghaffour told Reuters. “There might be a consensus but … we will remain independent.”

Voting was slow in Cairo, Alexandria and Port Said, in contrast to the crowds at polling stations last week.

The election committee has listed first-round shortcomings such as polling stations opening late, ballots arriving late and campaigning at polling stations, but said these would not recur.

Under a complex system, two-thirds of the 498 elected lower house seats go proportionately to party lists, with the rest going to individual candidates, who must win more than 50 percent of votes in the first round to avoid a run-off.

Only four seats were won outright in the first round, leaving 52 to be decided in run-off voting Monday and Tuesday, 24 of them contested between the FJP and Al-Nur. Other seats will be decided in later rounds.

Election committee figures from last week’s polls show an FJP-led list securing 36.6 percent of votes, Al- Nur’s Salafist list 24.4 percent and the Egyptian Bloc 13.4 percent.