Cairo, Egypt (CNN) -- Egyptians went to the polls Sunday for a second round of parliamentary elections, even though two major opposition parties are boycotting the vote in protest at what they called cheating in the first round last week.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition bloc, announced their boycott Wednesday. The Wafd party followed suit later, it announced.
The Muslim Brotherhood's website dismissed Sunday's run-off vote, saying most schoolchildren would remember it as nothing more than a day off school.
"In the 2005 elections it was more difficult to stuff ballot boxes because judges were inside the polling stations, but in 2010 there are no judges present," the group said in a statement on its website. "Instead, the High Elections Commission, which is made up of government-appointed judges and parliament nominees, now has the job of supervising the electoral process".
The party was wiped out in the first round of voting Sunday, going from 88 seats in the legislature to zero.
Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party won 217 seats in the first round of voting, the semi-official Al-Ahram newspaper said.
The opposition parties won a mere handful of seats in the 508-seat parliament.
Twenty-seven candidates affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood qualified for runoff elections. Muslim Brotherhood candidates run as independents because the group is illegal under to Egyptian law, which bans parties based on religion. CNN
