NEW ELECTION LAW HIGHLIGHTS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 BAGHDAD 003828

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PHUM KDEM PNAT IZ
SUBJECT: NEW ELECTION LAW HIGHLIGHTS

REF: LIM/NEA E-MAIL 9/13/05


1. (SBU) Summary. The Transitional National Assembly (TNA)
passed the election law September 12. The electoral system
for the December elections will consist of 230 seats
allotted to 18 governorate electoral districts and another
45 seats distributed nationally as compensatory seats. The
voter register from the January election will be used as
the basis for determining the number of National Assembly
seats allocated to each governorate. Small parties that
fail to win seats in the districts will be allocated
compensatory seats first if they meet the 'national
average.' The law aims to achieve the target of at least
25 percent female Assembly membership, and it likely will
succeed in that. TNA members overwhelmingly favored
including Out-of-Country Voting in the law - a measure that
was exceptionally expensive for the election commission in
January 2005. The final law received strong support from
all major blocs in the TNA, including Kurds, Shia Islamists
and former Prime Minister Allawi's Iraqiya group. End
Summary.


2. (SBU) The TNA passed the Election Law September 12 (Ref
contains English translation). Article 15 states that of
the 275 seats in the Council of Representatives, 230 seats
shall be distributed to the electoral districts and 45
shall be compensatory. It states further that "each
governorate is one election district in accordance with
official borders and shall be alloted a number of seats
proportional to the number of registered voters in the
governorates in accordance with the elections of January
30, 2005 based on the ration card system". During prior
debate over the election law, members weighed allocating
seats per governorate on either food distribution system
data or the voter registry. However, after the August voter
registry update preliminary results indicated that there
had been an exceptionally large number of new voter
registrations in Kirkuk -- over 227,000 new voters -- the
Shia negotiators insisted on using the voter registration
data from the January election to discount potentially
fraudulent registrations in Kirkuk during August.


3. (SBU) Based on voter registration data from the January
30, 2004 election, Embassy Baghdad estimates that the 230
seats will be allotted to governorates in the following
manner:

Voters Seats
-------------- --------------
Anbar 574,138 9
Babil 694,192 11
Baghdad 3,664,922 59
Basra 1,035,055 17
Diyala 624,099 10
Dohuk 429,182 7
Erbil 795,291 13
Karbala 409,081 6
Misan 417,273 7
Muthanna 295,326 5
Najaf 493,808 8
Ninewa 1,197,940 19
Qadissiya 486,827 8
Salahaddin 498,017 8
Suleimaniya 914,441 14
Tameem 576,048 9
Dhi Qar 778,574 12
Wasit 494,955 8
-- --
Total 14,379,169 230

Minority Compensatory Seats
--------------


4. (SBU) Article 17, which explains the distribution of
compensatory seats will allocate compensatory seats first
to parties that did not win any governorate seats, assuming
they obtain the "national average" (total number of votes
nationally divided by 275). (COMMENT: There is no limit
to the number of seats that can be distributed to smaller
parties in this way, but Shia and Kurdish contacts
calculate that, based on January election results, about
five smaller parties will benefit from this provision by
securing one seat each.) This latter distribution also
will be based on each party's proportion of the nationwide
vote.

Female Representation
--------------


5. (SBU) To ensure a minimum 25 percent female
representation in the TNA, article 11 states that, 'at
least one woman must be among the first three nominees on
the list and at least two women must be among the first six
nominees on the list and so on until the end of the list.'
(Comment. Based on this same formula, the single district
January election produced around 31 percent female
representation in the TNA. Although female representation
would be diluted using the same formula in a multi-district
system, the formula likely would meet the constitutional
goal of achieving at least 25 female Assembly membership.
End Comment.)

Out-of-Country Voting (OCV)
--------------


7. (SBU) Article 19 states, "Iraqis outside of Iraq shall
vote in polling centers designated by IECI and the votes
will be counted on the National level." (Comment. This
provision was included in the law despite UN technical
advice against OCV for the December election on resource
grounds. This OCV was exceptionally expensive in the
January 2005 election.)
Elections Crimes Article Deleted
--------------


8. (SBU) Even though TNA members voted to include an
article on penalties for elections crimes, the article was
deleted before the text was officially released by the TNA
legal committee. (COMMENT: The UN favored this provision
as a strong disincentive to those who would commit
electoral fraud. In our consultations with TNA members, we
will seek to clarify the background to this change.)

Parties Pleased With Law
--------------


9. (SBU) Shia negotiator and TNA deputy speaker Shahristani
told PolOff on September 12 that he was satisfied with the
law. TNA Legal Committee Chairman Mushen Sadoon (a Kurd)
was similarly pleased and said that there was broad
political agreement between the Shia and the Kurds on the
election law.
Satterfield