Some violations were more serious.

The Shehab Center for Human Rights, a local NGO based in Alexandria, announced that Shafik supporters in several polling stations used what is locally known as the rotating ballot, a pre-filled ballot form handed to voters outside of the polling station. A popular tactic under the Mubarak regime, it typically promised voters money if they deposited the pre-filled ballot in the ballot box and handed the blank ballot back to the Shafik supporters outside.

Revolutionary parties grudgingly told their supporters to vote for Morsi. But millions of voters who wanted change became their own strategists in front of a ballot. Some who had voted for Nasserist and revolutionary favorite Hamdeen Sabahi, who captured more than 4 million votes in the first round, said they decided to vote for Shafik because if he did a bad job, they could go to the street. Stopping a seemingly power-hungry Muslim Brotherhood was much harder, they said.

Still others said that Egypt now needed a leader guided by Islam to end its economic and security problems. Either way, neither was a ringing endorsement of the candidates.

“I don’t trust the Muslim Brotherhood anymore. It is very unfortunate that Morsi and Shafik are the only options now,” said Ahmed Karim, a 45 year-old government employee who once handed out posters of Sabahi in his western Alexandria neighborhood. This time, he decided to vote for Shafik in the runoff.

Yasser Gouda, 31, a print house worker in the largely Christian Cairo neighborhood of Shubra, said he voted for Shafik because he even though he served under Mubarak, he could not govern the same way anymore because of the uprising. Shubra, where many Christians fear living under the Brotherhood, was one of the few places that judges reported higher turnout.

“He won’t be able to govern like Hosni Mubarak did. If he does, he will know what his destiny is. It will be just like Hosni’s,” Gouda said. “I don’t think he will do this. He will do his best to get re-elected.”

Not all voters were dismayed. In the upper class neighborhood of Maadi, many voters said they welcomed both the dissolving of parliament and a potential President Shafik. The removal of Mubarak was enough change, they said, and change could only come about through a known quantity like Shafik.

“I’m happy that they dissolved Parliament. The Brotherhood had too much power,” Ragwa Ahmed Mohammed, 23, a secretary at a petrol company. “I am no with the revolutionaries at all. There has been enough change.”

Elections continue until Sunday. The president is slated to take the oath July 1.

(McClatchy special correspondents Mohannad Sabry in Alexandria, Egypt, and Amina Ismail in Cairo contributed to this report.)