Egyptian election workers wait today for voters at a polling station in Suez, Egypt. Egyptian authorities scrambled to rescue the country's presidential election from the embarrassment of a low voter turnout, but few people trickled to the polls even after the balloting was extended for a third day.

CAIRO — Egyptian authorities scrambled to rescue the country’s presidential election from a debacle of low voter turnout, but few people trickled to the polls today even after the balloting was extended for a third day.

The low turnout is increasingly likely to deprive the all-but-certain winner, former army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, of the overwhelming show of public support he sought in the vote.

El-Sissi has been looking for a huge turnout as evidence of legitimacy for his ouster last July of the nation’s first freely elected president, the Islamist Mohammed Morsi.

Opponents say the no-show at the polls reflects deep discontent with el-Sissi, not just among his Islamist foes but also among a broader section of the public that says he has no solutions for Egypt’s woes and fears he will return Egypt to the autocratic ways of Hosni Mubarak.

“The ballot boxes are looking for voters,” declared the front-page headline the Cairo daily Al-Shorouk. Even the generally pro-el-Sissi daily Al-Masry al-Youm appeared to rub salt into the wound.

“The state is looking for a vote,” the headline said in red letters.

For the past 10 months, the government and media have been whipping up adulation for el-Sissi, depicting him as the country’s savior.

They have praised his crackdown on Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist supporters, a campaign that has killed hundreds and put thousands in prison.

In Cairo’s upscale Zamalek district, a polling center did not have a single voter more than an hour after polls opened today. Masked army troops looked relaxed standing behind sandbags.