Authorities of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) will delay announcing the results of the city's legislative election because 6,539 ballots were found to be spoiled, the SAR's Legislative Election Affairs Committee said Monday.

The election of the fourth term of the Legislative Assembly of the Macao SAR officially started here Sunday morning. A total of 122 candidates from 16 groups contested for the 12 directly elected seats.

The committee said a total of 149,006 people cast their ballots in the election, which indicates a turnout of 59.6 percent.

The number of Macao's registered voters has reached 249,886 in this year's election, or about 46 percent of the SAR's population of over 540,000, which is an increase of 13.25 percent over the previous legislative election in 2005.

The election results are expected to be announced on Tuesday evening.

(Xinhua News Agency September 22, 2009)