A total of 86,905 polling stations are ready for 44 million voters to cast their ballots today and 869,050 officials will supervise the process and count the votes.

"Final preparations have been concluded and the voter turnout is expected to be about 72 per cent, on a par with the last general election," Election Commission secretary-general Ekachai Warunprapha said yesterday.

Of the 941 candidacy applications submitted for constituency voting, 589 candidates will run for the 400 House seats up for grabs. The other 100 seats are to be filled by party-list candidates allocated according to the proportion of votes each party receives.

Thai Rak Thai candidates will run unopposed in 200 constituencies in 59 provinces and must muster 20 per cent of the vote in each of these constituencies to win them.

Nonthaburi's third constituency has no potential MP because of Friday's disqualification of the lone Thai Rak Thai candidate Pimpa Chantharaprasong.

Voters there will cast ballots for party-list candidates today.

They can chose a constituency representative when the EC accepts fresh candidacy applications and organises a ballot at the same time as next month's Senate election.

Today's balloting will take place between 8am and 3pm, with voters being offered pens or a stamp to mark "X", or they can use their own pen of any colour.

EC chairman Vasana Puemlarp promised to complete the unofficial count by tomorrow and give the official outcome on Wednesday

Vote tallying will be conducted at 400 centres manned by 162,400 counters and 4,000 security guards.

Authorities in the three southernmost provinces are promoting the vote as well as strengthened security with bomb squads stepping up checks at polling stations.

Due to a freak storm in the lower Northeast yesterday, the Air Force provided a C-130 aircraft and a helicopter to fly 5,000 ballot boxes from Bangkok to Ubon Ratchathani and will help transport the ballots to counting centres today.

Monitors from Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan yesterday inspected the preparations at 188 polling stations in Songkhla and are scheduled to observe the voting.

At every province, officials fanned out to transport ballot boxes for overnight storage at district offices before releasing them to polling stations today while boats and helicopters have delivered boxes to islands.

Many civic groups are monitoring today's poll in a bid to prevent vote rigging and Deputy Prime Minister Chidchai Vanasatidya said the public should help officials ensure a clean election takes place.

"Some ill-intentioned people might try to tarnish the vote, hence it is everyone's responsibility to vote and to safeguard the ballots," he said.

Democrat Party spokesman Ong-art Klampaiboon said rumours that piles of Bt1,000 notes were ready for distribution on the eve of the election should be probed.

Ong-art urged voters to cast their ballots although his party was boycotting the election.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said he was ready to accept the election outcome, regardless of whether it was favourable for him or not. Suspected ballot fraud should be reported to the following hotlines, run by volunteers from the media and health professions: (02) 621 6705; (02) 621 7814; (09) 163 3326; (09) 163 3364 or seree.org@gmail.com