The deadline for overseas Pakistanis to register on the i-voting website launched by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) expired on Monday 9am, DawnNews TV reported.

Out of 790,000 Pakistanis living abroad, of which 631,909 were eligible for i-voting, only 7,419 people registered to vote out of 11,000 accounts created on the website. The registration period lasted for 17 days.

The ECP had launched the Overseas Voting System on Sept 1 for by-elections in 37 constituencies for both national and provincial assembly seats that are to be held on Oct 14. The ECP will email voter passes to all registered voters from Oct 10-14 through which they will be able to log in to the website.

Voting procedure for overseas Pakistanis

On polling day, the registered voters shall log in to the website using their credentials and enter the 'voter pass' emailed to him by the ECP. This will direct the voter to their registered national and provincial assembly constituencies to enable them to cast their vote.

A designated list of candidates of the selected constituency will be displayed by the system and the voter shall select the election symbol of their candidate to cast their vote. Upon successful submission of the vote, a “confirmation” message will be displayed on the screen.

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated the number of overseas Pakistanis to be 7.9 million. The correct figure is 790,000.