Hussan Al Taee left Phoenix at 4 a.m. with his wife, 1-year-old son, a cousin and his wife, driving to Southern California to do their part for democracy in Iraq.

Seven hours later, he stood outside the Officer's Club at the former El Toro Marine base in Orange County, proudly showing a small voter-registration card that will allow him to vote in his homeland's first democratic election.

The long drive across the desert to register Iraqis was a small price to pay for the right to vote, he said.

"I would come anywhere they wanted me," said Al Taee, 37, who left Kuwt, Iraq, a decade ago and now owns a smoke shop in Phoenix. "Everyone is happy. They want to have a choice."

Iraqis began arriving yesterday at the shuttered Marine base, the only location west of the Mississippi where they can register to vote in Iraq's Jan. 30 election to pick a 275-member national assembly that will name a government and draft a constitution.

Some 67,000 Iraqis living in the Western United States are eligible to register at the base. Organizers said they expected about half would make the trek before registration ends Sunday, many arriving in bus caravans organized out of Seattle, San Diego and Phoenix.

The registrants must make the journey to the retired Marine base a second time between Jan. 28 and 30 to actually vote.

The effort will be duplicated in the metropolitan areas of Chicago, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and Nashville, Tenn., and in 13 other countries where as many as 4 million Iraqis live. Other nations playing host to polling are Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Jordan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Turkey.

CARLOS OSORIO / AP Abdulrasul al-Hayder holds up his voter registration card in Southgate, Mich., yesterday after the 48-year-old Detroit resident registered to vote. The actual voting will be Jan. 28-30.

About 234,000 Iraqis who live in the United States are eligible to vote in the election, a fraction of the 14 million people eligible in Iraq. But for those who arrived yesterday, it was a deeply satisfying moment.

"For me, it's a historic day," said Nick Kenaya, 60, of San Diego, a Baghdad high-school teacher who said he was targeted for death 25 years ago after he refused to join the ruling Baath party. He escaped with his wife, Barbara, an elementary-school teacher.

"We've been waiting for this day for over three decades," he said. "Tens of thousands of Iraqis living in the U.S. escaped the [Saddam Hussein] regime to live in this free country. Now for the first time they can express themselves freely to rebuild the country in a democratic way.

"I can't express how happy I am."

A similar scene played out in the northern Chicago suburb of Skokie, Ill., where dozens of Iraqi immigrants were lined up and waiting to register when election officials finally arrived with boxes of registration forms. With the temperature outside falling into the single digits, voters slowly filed into the Assyrian National Council of Illinois Community Center.

At a dusty, state-owned warehouse in Southgate, Mich., a Detroit suburb, the first-day turnout was surprisingly low considering that the metropolitan area has one of the highest concentrations of Arabs in the United States.

"We didn't announce this officially until the 13th of January, so word hasn't gotten out as much as it should," said John Gattorn, who is responsible for organizing the Detroit registration drive.

In the Washington, D.C., area, at a hotel in New Carrollton, Md., "a slow, steady stream" of voters arrived to register, said Jeremy Copeland, a spokesman for the Iraq Out-of-Country Voting Program. The mood was "upbeat, with a lot of smiles," he said.

Armed guards and metal detectors monitored all the U.S. polling stations.

In Nashville, those seeking to register could not go directly to the two election sites but had to gather at a hastily arranged location to board a bus. Three-foot-high concrete barriers forced vehicles to zigzag as if entering a checkpoint as an armed officer checked credentials.

"Everybody saw the barriers coming in here. Some people are saying, 'We're not in Fallujah,' " said Ahmed Mossa, a volunteer at the polling place.

In California, those who arrived at the military base went through heavy security. Cars and bags were searched, would-be registrants walked through metal detectors and some were patted down by security guards.

Security was tight at registration centers overseas, too.

A navy base in Amsterdam was cordoned off with metal barriers for a one-block area and guarded by police vans. In a Stockholm suburb, exiles filed through metal detectors, outnumbered by officials, police and security guards.

At a London registration center near Wembley Stadium, Saieb Jabbar, who left Baghdad in 1980, registered with his 23-year-old son, Ahmed, who had made his only visit to Iraq recently. Both were eager to vote.

"We lived in a dictatorship a long time, and it's the first time in my life, in my 48 years, that I can vote in Iraq," Saieb Jabbar said. "I feel very happy."

In Britain, many of the estimated 150,000 eligible Iraqis were confused about the political process and unsure whom to vote for.

"People keep calling us and asking us, 'Who should we vote for?' " said Jabbar Hasan of the Iraqi Community Association in London. "We say it is up to you. You decide. It is a new experience, even for the political parties."

Material from Reuters and The Associated Press