| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| 'Significant Increase' Seen in Iraqi Expatriate Vote |
| 2005-12-18 |
| A group that monitored the Iraqi parliamentary elections said preliminary findings show "there has been a significant increase in voter turnout" among Iraqi expatriates casting ballots in 15 countries across the globe. The International Mission for Iraqi Elections, based in Canada, said in a Friday news release about 320,000 ballots were cast among Iraqi expatriates voting for the country's new parliament. That figure would surpass the 265,000 votes cast in the January 30 vote for a transitional national assembly. There was no out-of-country vote for the October constitutional referendum. This number is another indication of what U.S. and Iraqi authorities are calling a high voter turnout on Thursday for the four-year Council of Representatives, a 275-seat national parliament. Iraqi election officials have been counting votes for two days but cannot yet provide results or vote percentages, even though media reports estimate that the national turnout could be as high as 70 percent, pushing the number of actual voters past 11 million. This would exceed the January 30 vote toll, which was 8.5 million and the October 15 referendum, when more than 9.8 million Iraqis voted. There are about 15.5 million registered voters in Iraq. Abdul Hussein al-Hindawi, an Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq official, told reporters on Saturday that "official results will not be complete before 10 days or more" and final results won't be approved until a variety of citizen complaints about elections have been answered. Among the violations being probed are the destruction of posters, breaking the rules on media silence the day before election day, the conduct of electoral employees and campaign violence. The IECI said that more than 6,200 polling centers were in operation across Iraq on Thursday. They were staffed by more than 170,000 workers. "The polls generally opened on time and voting continued peacefully without major incidents," the IECI said in a statement. They were "monitored by 120,000 observers, including 800 accredited by international observer groups, and 230,000 political entity agents..." |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |