Burdzhanadze, Saakashvili, Shevardnadze vote

1. Various of presidential candidate Mikhail Saakashvili arriving to vote
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Mikhail Saakashvili, presidential candidate:
"Turnout is very good. Better than any other time in our history. This is quite amazing. People are really hopeful and of course we're looking forward to win this tonight."
3. Saakashvili walking into polling station
4. Press
5. Various of Saakashvili voting
6. Various of people standing outside polling station
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Mikhail Saakashvili, presidential candidate:
"Well, I voted for the future of Georgia and I'm amazed by an unusual high turnout today. It's the first election which I (have) witnessed where people are so active. That means that hope is back in Georgia. We should keep it."
8. Exterior of polling station where acting Georgian President Nino Burdzhanadze is to vote
9. Various of Burdzhanadze walking into polling station
10. Voters
11. Voting list
12. Burdzhanadze voting
13. Burdzhanadze walking outside
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Nino Burdzhanadze, acting Georgian President:
"I think we have one real candidate for (the) presidency. He (Mikhail Saakashvili) is a really very good candidate and I really wish to him to win in free and fair elections and I wish to begin a new era in Georgian history."
15. Burdzhanadze getting into car
16. Car driving off
17. Various of former president Eduard Shevardnadze going through voting process to cast ballot
18. Casting ballot
19. Ballot list
20. SOUNDBITE (Georgian) Eduard Shevardnadze, former president:
"I think everything will be alright. But Misha (nickname for Mikhail Saakashvili) has to study how to work properly to be a president. You need to do more than deliver speeches. He has to learn how to communicate with people."
21. Outside of voting station

STORYLINE:

Six weeks after Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze's dramatic resignation in the face of mass demonstrations, Georgians on Sunday voted for his successor, widely expected to be the man who led the protests.

Mikhail Saakashvili, the intense, 36-year-old Western-educated president of the Tbilisi city council, is the overwhelming favourite against four relatively unknown challengers.

A fifth candidate dropped out of the race late on Saturday.

The election is being closely watched as an indicator of Georgia's commitment to democracy after the downfall of Shevardnadze, who had cultivated ties with the West but retained Soviet-era impulses.

The protests against Shevardnadze, a former Soviet foreign minister, broke out after November parliamentary elections criticized as severely fraudulent.

Preliminary results were expected by Monday morning, and the central election commission promised final results on Wednesday.

Georgia's chaotic record-keeping has made preparing comprehensive voter lists impossible and the total number of eligible voters is unknown - a potentially touchy issue because the constitution requires a 50-percent turnout to be valid.

As of noon (0800 GMT), four hours after the polls opened, 500,783 people had cast ballots, said an election commission spokeswoman.

That would be about 30 percent of the approximately 1.7 (m) million people registered ahead of the voting, but because people are allowed to register on election day, there was no way to judge just how heavy the voting was.

However, speaking to reporters at the polling station, Saakashvili appeared confident there would be a high turnout.

Acting president Nino Burdzhanadze said after casting her ballot that she thought Saakashvili ought to win the election and become Georgia's new president.

Predictably, Shevardnadze said that Saakashvili, whom he called by his nickname "Misha", would have to work hard to pick up where he left off.
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