PARIS - Requests of extended voting time in the decisive presidential run-off on May 6 to avoid early leaks of election results were rejected by the French Interior Ministry on Monday.

French Electoral Commission asked earlier in the day to allow all polling stations to remain open until 8 pm local time (1800 GMT).

The request came after several media published result estimates for the first round of voting of the French presidential election on Sunday before all polling stations in France were closed.

A 1977 law bans any form of publication, distribution and comments concerning the election results through the press before the official announcement, so as to prevent late voters being swayed in their decisions.

Polling stations usually close at 6 pm local time (1600 GMT), when polling institutes would begin counting, while in big cities at 8 pm local time.

They extrapolate the results into nationwide predictions that are usually highly accurate and send them to media under embargo until all polling stations are closed, but unembargoed to foreign media.

"We can't create a digital frontier between France and all the other countries in the world to prohibit others from communicating with France," President Nicolas Sarkozy said before the election, commenting on threats by foreign media and networking sites to break the rules.