Slightly over 4.4 million registered voters are entitled to take part in the vote, or 32,263 more than in parliamentary elections in November 2003.
Voters will be able to cast their ballots at 6,731 polling stations in Croatia and Croatian diplomatic and consular missions abroad -- 6,576 polling stations will be open in Croatia, including 10 for Bosnian Croats residing in Croatia and two for Croatian citizens living abroad who happen to be in Zagreb on election day, and 155 abroad, most of them in Bosnia-Herzegovina (42), Germany (15), Australia (15) and Serbia-Montenegro (7).
Polling stations will open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. The first polling station will open in New Zealand at 7 p.m. on January 1 Croatian time, and the voting will close at 3 a.m. in Los Angeles.
The first round of voting will cost the government between 50 million and 60 million kuna (between approximately 6.6 and 7.9 million euros).
The voting will be overseen by 1,811 accredited monitors from the domestic non-governmental organisation GONG and six monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who will also monitor the polling stations in Serbia-Montenegro.
By comparison, the presidential elections in 2000 were monitored by 4,843 observers and the parliamentary elections that took place the same year were monitored by 6,388 observers.
Crnic said that only two incidents had occurred at 154 election rallies that had taken place since December 16 when the election campaign officially started.
Citing police reports, Crnic mentioned a bomb scare that had been reported in the southern town of Sinj and added that the garage of one of the presidential candidates had been broken into and looted.
Ten of the 13 presidential candidates agreed to police protection. Ivic Pasalic refused it, while Miroslav Blazevic and Miroslav Rajh did not respond to the offer.