Monday, October 17, 2005

Questionable results

The AP reports on the upcoming audit of the Iraq referendum:
Iraq's electoral commission said Monday it intended to audit "unusually high" numbers in results coming from most provinces in Saturday's landmark referendum on the draft constitution.

The commission's statement came after Sunni Arab legislator, Meshaan al-Jubouri, claimed fraud had occurred in the vote, including instances of voting in hotly contested regions Saturday by pro-constitution Shiites from other areas. His comments echoed those from other Sunni officials over the weekend...

The commission said it would take random samples from ballot boxes from areas reporting very high or very low percentages. It did not specify which provinces the unusual reports were coming from, or say to what extent it could affect the outcome.

From that report, the results seem questionable enough. But it takes Juan Cole to mention just how far out some results appear in some areas:
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.

From the U.S. election experience, it's safe to say how the process will work from here. The public image will be one of passage without serious question. The audit will go forward as planned, but probably won't be able to conclusively establish the nature of any fraud or error. In the meantime, the governing coalition will act as if passage was completed, and any Sunnis wanting to at least wait for a final result will be criticized for "destabilizing" the government's plans going forward. And even if the audit eventually reveals reason to overturn the result, that conclusion will be dismissed by the governing majority, accompanied by claims that it's too late to change the presumed result.

(Via MarkInSanFran at Kos.)

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