After nearly 30 years of dictatorial rule by Hosni Mubarak in her native Egypt, Amira Hussein never imagined she would nearly be disenfranchised by an American holiday celebrating bounty.
But last week Hussein and countless other Egyptians living in the United States faced that prospect, when ballots to vote in the parliamentary election were released on Thanksgiving Day when mail service – and just about everything else in the country – is closed.
The ballots, circulated online, would have had to be mailed to the Egyptian consulate in Washington, D.C., or hand-delivered by noon Saturday, Hussein said, giving her and countless other Egyptian nationals less than two days to participate in the first election since the fall of Mubarak’s regime in February.
“We notified as many people as we could,’’ said Mohammad Sherine Hamdy, 25, a first-year doctoral student at Harvard Law School who along with Hussein, a Boston University graduate student living in Boston, helped organize the ballot blitz.
“We had to send them by UPS or express mail to make sure they arrived in Washington, D.C.,’’ Hussein said. “Even though we have the right to vote, we can’t tell, are we getting the ballots in on time?’’
Hussein and other Egyptians in the region, whipped into action by the impending deadline, began a flurry of posts to a Facebook group, Egyptians in Boston, which as of last night had more than 400 members.
The tactics to mobilize Egyptian voters in America mimicked those of the revolution that enthralled the world in late January, when demonstrators first trickled, then flooded into Tahrir Square in Cairo, driven largely by the power of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
“Some activists in different Egyptian communities over the whole United States gathered in a Facebook group, got in touch with each other for the first time, and found volunteers to deliver by hand [ballots] to the Egyptian Embassy,’’ Hamdy said.
Complicating matters were the recent escalating demonstrations in Cairo.
While many Americans were mired in Thanksgiving traffic or devouring turkey with relatives, thousands of Egyptians were amassing in Tahrir Square, calling for the end of rule by national military leaders who have controlled much of the transition toward democracy since Mubarak was ousted and his government toppled on Feb. 11.
“At some point, we even thought the elections would be canceled because of what is happening in Tahrir Square,’’ Hussein said. “We’re taking it one day at a time; we’re seeing what the army is doing.’’
She and others with family and friends in Egypt would get reports from the streets and from local media and transmit it to people in this country.
“Whoever had a bit of information, they would just post it,’’ Hussein, 30, said in a phone interview.
Dr. Ahmed Samir Mady, of Boston, a 26-year-old cardiovascular researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, was among the local Egyptians catapulted into action by the quickly unfolding events.
“We sent out . . . an announcement to everyone to try to gather our ballots by Friday,’’ he said.
Many in the Facebook group posted that they mailed their ballots individually, Mady said.
A small coterie of Egyptians who remained in Boston gathered Friday, to express mail about 20 ballots to Washington.
Amid the outcry about the tight schedule, embassy and election officials extended the deadline to last night at midnight, giving some time to vote, but many were still critical of how the process was handled.
In interviews last night, Egyptian voters complained about inconsistent communications between voting officials and the public, unclear instructions, and an unnecessarily harried process.
They also defended against critics who have said the results will be dominated by Islamic parties but also meaningless because the body elected will have little power to determine the nation’s future.
Dina El-Zanfaly, 28, a doctoral candidate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying architecture, said she was eager to participate in her country’s new democratic process no matter what the results.
“I don’t care if it’s all Islamists or all liberals’’ who are voted in, said Zanfaly, of Cambridge. “I care if the election represents what people want.’’
Matt Byrne can be reached at mbyrne.globe@gmail.com.