Alleged vote fraud in Iraq.
Allegations of vote fraud in the Iraq Constitutional vote were to be expected I guess. But Juan Cole suggests the Iraqi inter-provincial results were a bit too wonky for the fraud allegations to be dismissed as the usual banana republic sore-loserdom:
Al-Hayat reports that 643,000 votes were cast in Ninevah Province (capital: Mosul). At the time it filed, 419,000 had been preliminarily counted, and the vote was running 75 percent in favor. Ninevah Province was the most likely place that Sunni Arabs opposing the constitution might be able to get a 2/3s "no" vote.
Several of my knowledgeable readers are convinced that the Ninevah voting results as reported so far look like fraud. One suspected that the Iraqi government so feared a defeat there that they over-did the ballot stuffing and ended up with an implausible result.
One of my Iraqi-American correspondents compared the turnout statistics from Ninevah and Diyala provinces last Jan. 30 to those coming out now, and found the current numbers completely unbelievable. He pointed out that the Iraqi Islamic Party had not garnered many votes in Ninevah last January, and its support of the constitution could not hope to explain the hundreds of thousands of "yes" votes the constitution appeared to receive on Saturday.
Chris Bowers, writing at MyDD, adds that a Kurdish-engineered rigging of the vote would hardly be unprecedented, and links to this story by historian Gareth Porter from a couple of weeks ago:
In the January election, the Kurds dealt with the problem of being a relatively small minority in the [majority Sunni province of Ninevah] province by stuffing the ballot boxes, as recounted by Maj. Anthony Cruz, an Army reserve civil affairs officer assigned to work with the province electoral commission.
...The KDP [Kurdistan Democratic Party] obviously miscalculated in thinking that electoral officials in Nineveh could be bribed to turn a blind eye to such crude ballot stuffing. But no damage was done by the failed attempt. The IECI [Independent Electoral Commision of Iraq] helped by diverting press attention from the Kurds, and U.S. news media never dug into the story behind the mountain of fraudulent ballots exhibited by the commission.
In the constitutional referendum, the Shiite government will share the Kurdish interest in doing whatever is necessary to avert the defeat of the constitution in Nineveh. Meanwhile, the U.S. military remains heavily dependent on Kurds in Nineveh. The KDP may well believe that a more sophisticated Kurdish ballot-stuffing scheme will work on October 15.
Had two thirds of Ninevah voters chosen the "no" option, given the current country-wide counts, the constitution would have failed.
One more thought on perusing this stuff: It would be really useful if the mainstream media reports, like the ABC report linked above, would actually give some context for what Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission is: who controls it, whether it's likely to uncover fraud that takes forms other than just miscounted ballots, whether it's more interested in ensuring clean elections or in preserving peace (both worthy, but not necessarily congruent, goals).
Al-Hayat reports that 643,000 votes were cast in Ninevah Province (capital: Mosul). At the time it filed, 419,000 had been preliminarily counted, and the vote was running 75 percent in favor. Ninevah Province was the most likely place that Sunni Arabs opposing the constitution might be able to get a 2/3s "no" vote.
Several of my knowledgeable readers are convinced that the Ninevah voting results as reported so far look like fraud. One suspected that the Iraqi government so feared a defeat there that they over-did the ballot stuffing and ended up with an implausible result.
One of my Iraqi-American correspondents compared the turnout statistics from Ninevah and Diyala provinces last Jan. 30 to those coming out now, and found the current numbers completely unbelievable. He pointed out that the Iraqi Islamic Party had not garnered many votes in Ninevah last January, and its support of the constitution could not hope to explain the hundreds of thousands of "yes" votes the constitution appeared to receive on Saturday.
Chris Bowers, writing at MyDD, adds that a Kurdish-engineered rigging of the vote would hardly be unprecedented, and links to this story by historian Gareth Porter from a couple of weeks ago:
In the January election, the Kurds dealt with the problem of being a relatively small minority in the [majority Sunni province of Ninevah] province by stuffing the ballot boxes, as recounted by Maj. Anthony Cruz, an Army reserve civil affairs officer assigned to work with the province electoral commission.
...The KDP [Kurdistan Democratic Party] obviously miscalculated in thinking that electoral officials in Nineveh could be bribed to turn a blind eye to such crude ballot stuffing. But no damage was done by the failed attempt. The IECI [Independent Electoral Commision of Iraq] helped by diverting press attention from the Kurds, and U.S. news media never dug into the story behind the mountain of fraudulent ballots exhibited by the commission.
In the constitutional referendum, the Shiite government will share the Kurdish interest in doing whatever is necessary to avert the defeat of the constitution in Nineveh. Meanwhile, the U.S. military remains heavily dependent on Kurds in Nineveh. The KDP may well believe that a more sophisticated Kurdish ballot-stuffing scheme will work on October 15.
Had two thirds of Ninevah voters chosen the "no" option, given the current country-wide counts, the constitution would have failed.
One more thought on perusing this stuff: It would be really useful if the mainstream media reports, like the ABC report linked above, would actually give some context for what Iraq's Independent Electoral Commission is: who controls it, whether it's likely to uncover fraud that takes forms other than just miscounted ballots, whether it's more interested in ensuring clean elections or in preserving peace (both worthy, but not necessarily congruent, goals).
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