Iraqi voter turnout higher than many U.S. elections

BAGHDAD, Iraq — From Baghdad, Mosul and Basra to tiny hamlets along river valleys, from the mountainous Kurdish north to the marshy Shiite south and the arid Sunni west, Iraqis voted in droves Thursday.

Across ethnic, sectarian and religious divides, they packed the polling places, dipping their fingers in purple ink after casting ballots for a full-time 275-seat legislature.

Election officials said more than 10 million of Iraq's 15 million registered voters — almost 70 percent — turned out for the election that could determine the course of the nation and the success or failure of the U.S. effort to promote Western-style democracy in the Middle East.

"May God protect Iraq and Iraqis," voters in the Sunni city of Fallujah chanted as trays of rice and meat were carried into the election center, compliments of a local sheik with tribal ties to the country's violent insurgency.

In the most significant of the three landmark elections this year, the turnout was a million more than in October's referendum on a new constitution and nearly 2 million more than in January's election for a preliminary government.

By comparison, the highest turnout since 1932 in a U.S. presidential election was 62.8 percent in 1960.

"This election is going to change everything, because everyone realizes now that the only way to take power is through the ballot box," said Abdullah Mohammed, 32, a television technician casting his ballot in the Baghdad neighborhood of Yarmouk. "This election is going to unite all Iraqis."

Iraq election snapshot


An estimated 10 million to 12 million Iraqis went to the polls Thursday to elect the country's first permanent parliament since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Sunni Muslims turned out to vote in large numbers, after snubbing a January vote for an interim legislature, which ended up being controlled by Shiites and Kurds.

The new National Assembly could be more representative and productive than the outgoing one, which drafted Iraq's constitution, if Iraq's feuding ethnic groups can overcome differences and avoid civil war.

U.S. officials hope the election will lead to stability and permit some of the 140,000 U.S. troops to withdraw.

The turnout boosted hopes that the next Iraqi government will enjoy enough popular support to take the sting out of the Sunni-led insurgency and permit U.S. troops to start returning home next year. Swelling the numbers were large numbers of Sunnis, whose boycott of January's poll left them shut out of power and opened the door to the sectarian rivalries that have helped fuel much of the violence.

Thursday's election will decide the composition of the legislature that will form a four-year government, the country's first permanent administration since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

The results will determine how much and how fast Iraq will move toward a federal system with several semi-autonomous regions after decades under Saddam's dictatorial, Sunni-dominated central government; how much it will adopt Islamic principles after decades of secular rule, and whether it will move closer toward Shiite Muslim-led Iran to the east or pro-U.S. Arab regimes to the west.

"A lot of joy"

U.S. officials hope the vote will stabilize the country and allay fears in the U.S. that Iraq has turned into a political and military quagmire with no foreseeable end.

"There's a lot of joy as far as I'm concerned in seeing the Iraqi people accomplish this major milestone in the march to democracy," said President Bush at a White House meeting with out-of-country Iraqi voters. "I believe freedom is universal. I believe the Iraqi citizen cares just as much about freedom and living a free life as the American citizen does."

In Iraq, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., said the American people are watching the election and postelection period closely, knowing that a harmonious and inclusive Iraqi government is a step toward bringing U.S. troops home.

"After the elections, [the American people] will be looking to see what's next. Will the country come together, or will it fall apart?" said Biden, after visiting a polling station in the southern city of Hillah. "Now the hard part of democracy comes. After you choose the leaders, are they going to be able to come together?"

He urged Iraqi politicians to rise above the sectarian tensions and petty rivalries that plagued the formation of an interim government after January's vote and also surfaced later during the drafting of a national constitution.

Scattered bombings

The polls opened at 7 a.m. to the boom of a mortar explosion inside the fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad that injured three people, including a U.S. Marine. Elsewhere, there were scattered reports of bombings in Fallujah, Mosul, Ramadi and Tal Afar. Three people were reported killed, including a man who died when a mortar exploded as he waited to vote near a polling station in Mosul.

But by the standards of an average day in Iraq, this one was remarkably peaceful.

Because of a complete ban on traffic to prevent suicide bombers, Iraqis walked to the polls, as they did on the two previous occasions. Police and soldiers kept watch with a practiced air as families strolled through the streets to vote and youths gathered on deserted highways to play soccer.

At some polling stations, turnout topped 80 percent. Ballot papers ran out in several places, including the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, where the mayor said about one-third of polling stations didn't get ballot boxes and many voters were turned away. Voting was extended by an hour nationwide because voters were still standing in line in some locations when the polls were due to close.

Long lines of voters snaked through the streets of the troubled city of Mosul, which has a large Sunni population and had a turnout of only 17 percent in January. In the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, in the troubled western province of Anbar, voting was reported brisk at polling stations guarded by gunmen hired by local tribal sheiks. The significance of the election was not lost on those who cast their ballots.

"This is a real election," said Ammar Sami, 27, a player for Iraq's national basketball team who voted for the first time in the Yarmouk neighborhood. "The first one didn't mean anything, but this one will decide the fate of the country."

Most Sunnis now believe they made a grave error in ceding the last election to the Shiite majority and the Kurds who joined them in the current coalition government. At one voting center in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Ameriyah, a notoriously violent stronghold of the Sunni insurgency where almost no one voted in January's election, more than 90 percent of registered voters had cast ballots by late afternoon, and people were still streaming in to vote. "If we get more seats, it will be quieter," said Amer Fadhel Hassani, 45, the Sunni owner of an electrical supply store in Baghdad. "The ones who were absent in January will now have a voice."

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, said he expects the insurgency will "gradually reduce as the root causes of the insurgency are addressed." But some voters in the Sunni Arab communities dominating the insurgency said the fighting against the U.S. military and Iraqi security forces will not stop.

"The resistance will continue," said Qessan Nasseri, a 47-year-old Sunni Arab accountant and member of the same tribe as Saddam Hussein. "Nobody wants America on Iraqi soil. As long as we are occupied, no one will lay down their weapons."

Tactical voting

Voters chose from a kaleidoscopic array of candidates, coalitions and parties to fill the council of representatives. But Iraq's election rules and demographic realities likely will give one ticket a commanding status: the Shiite Muslim United Iraqi Alliance, which dominates the incumbent government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

Though it's not likely that it will match the 48 percent of votes it received in January, the coalition of political parties representing the country's Shiite majority will almost certainly be the largest vote-getter, giving it first crack at forming a government.

Many Sunnis voted for a coalition of Sunni parties and organizations called the Iraqi Consensus Front and for a slate led by Arab nationalist Salah Mutlaq. But some chose the secular list led by former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.

"I didn't vote in January because at the time the political realities were not clear," said Abdul Samariyee, 65, a retired tax collector in Baghdad's Qadasiya district. "Now, Iraqis have begun to realize that the peaceful way is better than violence to get their demands."

For some, there was the thrill of voting for the first time. "It's great, it's wonderful, it's exciting. You can't describe it in any other words," said Saif Thamer, 22, a Sunni student voting in Jamiaa, another Baghdad neighborhood known for its insurgent sympathies. He boycotted the previous two polls.

"We suffer very much here, from car bombs and gunbattles, and there are a lot of terrorists hiding here," he said. "This is why we came today, to defeat the terrorists. We want peace, whether it's a Sunni or Shiite government."

More-experienced voters discovered the art of tactical voting. Schoolteacher Lamis Idriss, 30, a Sunni Arab voting for the third time, said she hoped Allawi would win enough seats to lead the next government. But she also fears the violence will worsen if Sunni politicians aren't sufficiently represented in the new legislature, so she decided to vote for the main Sunni coalition, the Iraqi Consensus Front.

Idriss had also figured out how to vote twice; by coating her finger in Vaseline before dipping it in the indelible ink designed to deter double voting, she was able to remove the ink and vote again.

"It's for the sake of the country," she said.