PROVINCIAL ELECTIONS KICK OFF WITH SPECIAL NEEDS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BAGHDAD 000239 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/29/2019 TAGS: PGOV PINR SOCI IZ SUBJECT: PROVINCIAL ELECTIONS KICK OFF WITH SPECIAL NEEDS VOTING REF: BAGHDAD 210 Classified By: Acting Political Counselor Timothy Lenderking for reason s 1.4 (b) and (d). ¶1. (C) Summary: Polling centers around Iraq opened for the day on January 28 to accommodate "special needs" voters. Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and Police (IP),detainees in Iraqi and Multinational Force - Iraq (MNF-I) centers, and hospital patients and staff were eligible to vote early in the provincial elections. The rest of the Iraqi populace will go to the polls on January 31. The Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) reports that all 382 special needs polling centers opened on time. There were isolated incidents of violence and a few logistical glitches, but international and embassy observers deployed around the country provided generally upbeat assessments of the day. This bodes well for the regular election on January 31. One wrinkle for January 31 that has just emerged is a decision by IHEC to open 22 new polling stations around the country to better accommodate internally displaced voters. IHEC is working to organize these centers, but big numbers of unexpected IDPs never registered on voter lists who decide to try to vote on Election Day will present a huge, last-second logistical challenges. End Summary. ¶2. (SBU) As provided for in the Provincial Election Law (PEL),the IHEC conducted special needs voting for the ISF, IP, detainees, and hospital patients and staff on January 28. Three hundred eight-two polling centers opened at 0700 to accommodate the 613,631 Iraqis eligible to vote early. Polling centers were supplied with ballots from all of the 14 Governorates of Iraq that are participating in the provincial elections, and remained open until 1700. Ballots cast through the special needs voting process will be secured at warehouses managed by the Governorate Electoral Office (GEO), the provincial office of the IHEC, and will be counted at special tally centers in the governorate where they were cast. These votes will not be counted until after the January 31 regular voting occurs, and are unlikely to be included in the preliminary results that IHEC anticipates announcing on or before February 5 (Reftel). ¶3. (C) At the invitation of the GoI, the Embassy and Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in 11 governorates deployed 18 teams of observers to special needs polling centers (Reftel). Security -------------- ¶4. (SBU) USG observers reported that security appeared good at the polling centers visited, with polling staff professional and well-organized. IHEC staff working at centers spoke with visiting observers, and reported no incidents of violence or intimidation. Iraqi media has carried several stories, some substantiated and others not, on election security. Arabic-language daily Az-Zaman reported ballot boxes stuffed with votes for particular candidates were discovered enroute to Najaf and Basrah. Other reports in the media had ballot boxes with ISCI votes being found by Da'wa officials, who burned the boxes before they could be documented. Sharqiya reported the firing of two electoral officials in Diyala for corruption; they had been fired more than 10 days ago but the report could be interpreted to mean that voter fraud had been discovered during voting on January 28. These claims appear to be either exaggerated, taken out of context, or, in the case of the stuffed ballot boxes, unsubstantiated. Two police officers guarding a polling center south of Kirkuk were reportedly killed in a drive-by shooting. ¶5. (C) The Iraqi web site Aswat al-Iraq reported that Q5. (C) The Iraqi web site Aswat al-Iraq reported that journalists who visited the al-Mena prison in Basrah were attacked by the (Iraqi) security guards at the center. Further investigation, however, revealed that the journalists had taken unauthorized photographs of detainees and were asked to leave the center, prompting a scuffle with security guards. Najaf PRT reported that an unspecified number of Iraqi Police did not turn up at the sites where they were assigned to provide security. No security incidents were reported at these sites. Ballot Shortages -------------- ¶6. (C) While there were few problems at polling centers reported, at least two polling centers had inadequate supplies of ballots, resulting in as many as 6,000 voters being turned away. (Note: We are in contact with IHEC to ensure there is a mechanism to allow such voters to cast their ballots eventually. UNAMI told us January 29, however, BAGHDAD 00000239 002 OF 002 that IHEC had received no complaints from voters about the shortage of ballots. End Note). This appears to have happened as the Iraqi Ministries of Defense and Interior provided inaccurate data to the IHEC on the number of soldiers and police expected to be in the area. To limit the opportunity for fraud, the IHEC had requested these details early, and dispatched only the appropriate number of ballots to each center. ¶7. (C) One center in Baghdad had received only Baghdad ballots, making it impossible for voters from other governorates to cast their ballots. The IHEC was notified and reportedly sent ballots from the warehouse to the polling center. Other centers requested additional ballot boxes. The special needs ballots, which must be placed in two envelopes, are bulkier than the regular ballots. Boxes designed to hold 400 ballots were full with just 100. Observers noted that candidate lists were displayed appropriately, and that voters took their time to examine the lists to find their candidates' name and number. At least one polling center in Anbar closed early, when the poll workers ran out of ballots. Once IHEC senior management became aware of this, it dispatched additional ballots, and the poll re-opened. UNAMI confirmed what it considered to be minor glitches in what had been "a pretty good day." Sandra Mitchell, Chief of Elections for UNAMI, said that the IHEC and UN are investigating the early closing of some polling centers in Najaf and Anbar, but that on the whole they consider the special needs voting to have gone well. Mitchell went on to explain that the systems in place enabled IHEC to re-open one polling center that had been mistakenly authorized to close early, after it had run out of ballots. Voter behavior and atmospherics -------------- ¶8. (C) Voters were reported to be satisfied, and even "festive" in casting their ballots. Queues at polling centers were orderly. PRT Saleh ad Din's end of day report was typical: the general feeling of the voters was positive, proud, and grateful to the U.S. for help. One woman in Tikrit commented, "I am very happy about what is happening. We are free to express ourselves. Under Saddam we could only say what he wanted. Today, nothing happened to scare or influence me; now my kids can live free." Comment -------------- ¶9. (C) The relative efficiency with which special needs voting was carried out is an initial indicator of the advances that have been made in Iraq since the last elections in 2005 and bodes well for polling on January 31. Not only did thousands of Iraqis go to the polls in peace to express their political will, but on the whole the Iraqi bureaucracy demonstrated that it is capable of organizing and conducting a relatively complicated electoral process. The real test comes on January 31, of course, but our initial sense is that the voting on January 28 was a successful dry run for January ¶31. One wrinkle for January 31 that has just emerged is a decision by IHEC to open 22 new polling stations around the country to better accommodate IDP voters. The vast majority of IDPs chose not to register as IDP voters last year. IHEC is now responding to last-minute demands that they do more to allow even IDPs who did register on voter lists to vote. IHEC is working now to ensure proper organization, but if hundreds of thousands of eligible IDPs show up to vote on Election Day, there will be many logistical snarls and likely complaints of fraud on all sides. CROCKER