1,065,847 people registered to vote in the parliamentary election, a record for Somaliland.[13][15] 246 candidates vied for 82 seats.[15] Polls opened at 7 a.m. on 31 May.[13] Like the 2017 presidential election, the parliamentary election used iris recognition technology; the 2017 election marked the first time such technology was used for a national election.[3][16][17] The 2021 election had 2,709 polling stations, an increase of 61 percent from 2017, with more than 30,000 people staffing the polls.[16] International election observers were given broad power by the government to monitor.[16] 103 observers came, including former President of Sierra Leone Ernest Bai Koroma, Kenyan journalist and anti-corruption activist John Githongo, and South African analyst Greg Mills.[13][18][19] Somaliland, one of the world's poorest nations with a government budget of $339 million, nevertheless paid for 70 percent of the election's $21.8 million cost; the rest was funded by the European Union, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.[16] Ambassadors from 10 European nations and a European Union ambassador came to the city of Hargeisa to show support for the election.[16]