Ecuador is scheduled to hold its general elections on Sunday.

The followings are some key facts about the elections.

According to the National Electoral Council, some 10.5 million Ecuadorians out of the 14-million population have registered for Sunday's elections, which will select the country's president, vice president, 124 assembly members, 221 mayors, 46 governors and vice governors, 1,581 municipal councilors and five Andean parliamentarians.

A female Ecuadorean inmate casts her ballot at a women's prison in Quito, capital of Ecuador, April 24, 2009. About 3,000 inmates without sentence voted on April 24 for the first time in the country, after the Constituent Assembly modified in 2007 the electoral law.(Xinhua/Santiago Armas)

Voting is scheduled to begin at 7:00 a.m. local time (1200 GMT) on Sunday and end at 5:00 p.m. (2200 GMT). Preliminary results for the presidential race are expected on late Sunday.

 By Ecuador's election law, to secure a straight victory with the first round, a candidate must capture either a majority of the vote or a plurality of more than 40 percent with a margin of at least 10 percentage points over the second-place candidate.

Otherwise, a second round of voting will be held between the top two candidates on June 14.

There are eight candidates competing for the presidency. Latest opinion polls showed incumbent President Rafael Correa net some 50percent of the voters' support, the most hopeful to win the race even very likely to avoid a second round.

His major rivals, former president Lucio Gutierrez and billionaire Alvaro Noboa, had got 16-17 percent and 15 percent, respectively.

Some 300,000 policemen and soldiers have been deployed across the country for the security of the elections.

About 200 international observers, from the Organization of American States and the European Union, have gone to 24 provinces in Ecuador to supervise the elections.