Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Iraq’s Parliament Votes To Cancel Overseas And Some Displaced Voting In 2018 Election REVISED


After three tries Iraq’s parliament finally raised a quorum and voted to annual part of the May elections. All overseas votes along with voting in displaced camps in Anbar, Salahaddin, Ninewa, and Diyala were cancelled due to fraud charges. 10% of the ballot boxes would also have a manual recount. If a 25% difference was found with the original results the ballots in the entire province would have to be counted again.  Parties from across the political spectrum and in several different provinces have claimed cheating in the vote. Some of that is due to poor showing, while in other cases there appeared to be real irregularities. Despite this seeming consensus it appeared that the party bosses were not pushing their followers to show up to the National Assembly to take action on the matter. That finally happened. The cancellation and recount could change the election results for some parties. Since most of the major lists finished very closely a possible change in a few seats will likely not have that much of an effect.

ADDITION

Despite news reports from yesterday it appears that parliament's decision was a non-binding resolution so the Election Commission does not have to follow it. 

SOURCES

AIN, “The text of the decision of Parliament regarding the elections including the abolition of the results,” 5/28/18

Aldroubi, Mina, “Iraq MPs demand partial recount of election results,” The National, 5/29/18

Al Maalomah, “The number of deputies attending the extraordinary parliament session increased to 152 deputies,” 5/28/18

2 comments:

Humam Miscone said...

Joel,

Overseas is not accurate. The elections were held in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iran which are neighboring countries no “overseas”. I suggest using the more accurate “abroad”>

Also, on what basis you said that the Parliament resolution is not binding? What are the legal basis? And who is the source of this piece of “information”?

Joel Wing said...

Yes foreign voting would have been a better term. There was voting in the U.S. and Europe however so there was some "overseas".

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