iraqis turn out vote in large numbers

[zimv20]

link (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/international/middleeast/30cnd-iraq.html?hp&ex=1107147600&en=562b2d104653f499&ei=5094&partner=homepage)


BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 30 - After a slow start, voters turned out in very large numbers in Baghdad today, packing polling places and creating a party atmosphere in the streets as Iraqis here and nationwide turned out to cast ballots in the country's first free elections in 50 years.

American officials were showing confidence that today was going to be a big success, despite attacks in Baghdad and other parts of the country that took at least two dozen lives. The Interior Ministry said 36 people had been killed in attacks, Agence France-Presse reported.

But the violence did not seem to have deterred most Iraqis.

The chairman of the Independent Election Commission of Iraq, Fareed Ayar, said as many as 8 million people turned out to vote, or between 55 percent and 60 percent of those registered to cast ballots. If 8 million turns out to be the final figure, that would represent 57 percent of voters.

(more)

i found this pretty heartening. the next steps will indeed be interesting.

[blackfox]

yeah, I read about the beginning of the Election day last night before bed, and although turnout was pretty good in the Kurdish North and Shia South, many Baghdad/Sunni Triangle area polling stations were empty. So I had my reservations. This is good news.

I may not agree with the policies that brought us to this point, but I have no interest in things going even worse for the average Iraqi to prove a political point.

I shall keep tabs, whatever the ultimate practical significance of this election, god bless those Iraqis for embracing the process in the face of uncertain violence.

[Thomas Veil]

Damn, you beat me to posting this topic by fifteen minutes.

Well, I've got nothing else to add (I'm heartened too), but I do wonder: when this 275-member national assembly is convened to write the country's constitution and elect a president, how will they be protected? What's to prevent the insurgents from launching a rocket right into wherever they are meeting, killing many newly-elected Iraqi officials with one strike?

Anyway, it's good to see that things are going well so far.

[LethalWolfe]

I shall keep tabs, whatever the ultimate practical significance of this election, god bless those Iraqis for embracing the process in the face of uncertain violence.

I completely agree.


Slight thread fork...

How many Americans do you think would turn out to vote under similar conditions?

Granted the last election brought out the biggest turn out in decades, but overall I'm still saddend by the complacincy<sp?> and laziness that exists in America in regards to voting. Iraq's suffered thru months of intense violence and still turned out to vote while many Americans can't be bothered to spend a few minutes filling out a reg card and going to the polls.

Seeing interviews w/Iraqs (both in and out of ths US) so over-joyed about being able to vote in the election got me thinking abou this.

/Thread fork


Lethal

[zimv20]

lethal -- i feel we take our democracy for granted. further, i think this will be our undoing.

[blackfox]

I completely agree.


Slight thread fork...

How many Americans do you think would turn out to vote under similar conditions?

Granted the last election brought out the biggest turn out in decades, but overall I'm still saddend by the complacincy<sp?> and laziness that exists in America in regards to voting. Iraq's suffered thru months of intense violence and still turned out to vote while many Americans can't be bothered to spend a few minutes filling out a reg card and going to the polls.

Seeing interviews w/Iraqs (both in and out of ths US) so over-joyed about being able to vote in the election got me thinking abou this.

/Thread fork


Lethal

Lethal, your post got me to thinking about Americans under similar circumstances as the Iraqis. Unfortunately, there is no real comparative period, as the first Elections in the newly formed US have no information on voter turnout and as far as Presidential Elections went, the electoral votes were doled out by the legislatures, not the people's votes.

I did notice that between 1840-1900, the US enjoyed the highest voter turnout ever, always above 70%, often above 85% (this was, of course limited to males, and only white males in the South).

This was, of course, the period up to, during, and after the Civil War, so people did have a vested interest in politics. There used to be quite alot of fanfare and party-propaganda thrown around. The Republican Party formed during this period. It is curious how different the GOP and Democrats are now, as the GOP began with calls for bigger government to help the economy and also for the freedom of blacks, while the Democrats supported smaller government and state's rights, which caused them to side with the South on the slavery issue.

In any case, during that period, the parties were for the most part identical on platform issues, and voter party loyalty was nevertheless high. The real differences were in constituencies, with the GOP having the evangelical protestant base, and the Democrats having the Roman Catholic, Methodist and other non-evangelical Christians as theirs, due largely to their belief that government should not regulate individual behavior and religious belief. They also had the support of the South, due to state's rights issues, both before the CW, and during reconstruction.

I suppose some parallels could be drawn between this period, and the partisanship based on religious affiliation, and Iraq today.

It should be noted, that despite relative apathy by today's voters (US), in the early 1800's, voter turnout was abyssmal, with only 26% of voter turnout for the 1824 Election, and in 1820, when Adams ran virtually unopposed and voter turnout was around 1%. So, I have little doubt that when more and more issues become deeply personal to individual voters, turnout will once again increase.

[Dont Hurt Me]

This is a good sign that people are interested in their country. I had my doubts about the Iraqi people. This is good news I saw 57% earlier so this is great. Its up to the Iraqi's to chart their future. As much as i cant stand George these days he is giving this country something it did not have before. Now can a true democracy take shape or will another Saddam come and remove the peoples voice. Sort of like Putin in Russia? Soon any sign of democracy will be gone in that country and its back to the same old scheme of tyrants wanting to control everyone's voice. I wonder.

[IJ Reilly]

Good questions. The Sunni population will be underrepresented in the new national assembly, which is bound to lead to deeper resentment. What happens in response to the lopsided power arrangement will depend on the wisdom of the new government, such as it is. In a country without a tradition of democracy and pluralism, it's difficult to be overly optimistic.

[skunk]

This Election Will Change the World. But Not in the Way the Americans Imagined
****By Robert Fisk
****The Independent U.K.

****Saturday 29 January 2005

****Shias are about to inherit Iraq, but the election tomorrow that will bring them to power is creating deep fears among the Arab kings and dictators of the Middle East that their Sunni leadership is under threat.

****America has insisted on these elections - which will produce a largely Shia parliament representing Iraq's largest religious community - because they are supposed to provide an exit strategy for embattled US forces, but they seem set to change the geopolitical map of the Arab world in ways the Americans could never have imagined. For George Bush and Tony Blair this is the law of unintended consequences writ large.

****Amid curfews, frontier closures and country-wide travel restrictions, voting in Iraq will begin tomorrow under the threat of Osama bin Laden's ruling that the poll represents an "apostasy". Voting started among expatriate Iraqis yesterday in Britain, the US, Sweden, Syria and other countries, but the turnout was much smaller than expected.

****The Americans have talked up the possibility of massive bloodshed tomorrow and US intelligence authorities have warned embassy staff in Baghdad that insurgents may have been "saving up" suicide bombers for mass attacks on polling stations.

****But outside Iraq, Arab leaders are talking of a Shia "Crescent" that will run from Iran through Iraq to Lebanon via Syria, whose Alawite leadership forms a branch of Shia Islam. The underdogs of the Middle East, repressed under the Ottomans, the British and then the pro-Western dictators of the region, will be a new and potent political force.

****While Shia political parties in Iraq have promised that they will not demand an Islamic republic - their speeches suggest that they have no desire to recreate the Iranian revolution in their country - their inevitable victory in an election that Iraq's Sunnis will largely boycott mean that this country will become the first Arab nation to be led by Shias.

****On the surface, this may not be apparent; Iyad Allawi, the former CIA agent and current Shia "interim" Prime Minister, is widely tipped as the only viable choice for the next prime minister - but the kings and emirs of the Gulf are facing the prospect with trepidation.

****In Bahrain, a Sunni monarchy rules over a Shia majority that staged a mini-insurrection in the 1990s. Saudi Arabia has long treated its Shia minority with suspicion and repression.

****In the Arab world, they say that God favoured the Shia with oil. Shias live above the richest oil reserves in Saudi Arabia and upon some of the Kuwaiti oil fields. Apart from Mosul, Iraqi Shias live almost exclusively amid their own country's massive oil fields. Iran's oil wealth is controlled by the country's overwhelming Shia majority.

****What does all this presage for the Sunni potentates of the Arabian peninsula? Iraq's new national assembly and the next interim government it selects will empower Shias throughout the region, inviting them to question why they too cannot be given a fair share of their country's decision-making.

****The Americans originally feared that parliamentary elections in Iraq would create a Shia Islamic republic and made inevitable - and unnecessary - warnings to Iran not to interfere in Iraq. But now they are far more frightened that without elections the 60 per cent Shia community would join the Sunni insurgency.

****Tomorrow's poll is thus, for the Americans, a means to an end, a way of claiming that - while Iraq may not have become the stable, liberal democracy they claimed they would create - it has started its journey on the way to Western-style freedom and that American forces can leave.

****Few in Iraq believe that these elections will end the insurgency, let alone bring peace and stability. By holding the poll now - when the Shias, who are not fighting the Americans, are voting while the Sunnis, who are fighting the Americans, are not - the elections can only sharpen the divisions between the country's two largest communities.

****While Washington had clearly not envisaged the results of its invasion in this way, its demand for "democracy" is now moving the tectonic plates of the Middle East in a new and uncertain direction. The Arab states outside the Shia "Crescent" fear Shia political power even more than they are frightened by genuine democracy.

****No wonder, then, King Abdullah of Jordan is warning that this could destabilise the Gulf and pose a "challenge" to the United States. This may also account for the tolerant attitude of Jordan towards the insurgency, many of whose leaders freely cross the border with Iraq.

****The American claim that they move secretly from Syria into Iraq appears largely false; the men who run the rebellion against US rule in Iraq are not likely to smuggle themselves across the Syrian-Iraqi desert when they can travel "legally" across the Jordanian border.

****Tomorrow's election may be bloody. It may well produce a parliament so top-heavy with Shia candidates that the Americans will be tempted to "top up" the Sunni assembly members by choosing some of their own, who will inevitably be accused of collaboration. But it will establish Shia power in Iraq - and in the wider Arab world - for the first time since the great split between Sunnis and Shias that followed the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

I think this is only the beginning of a new problem.

[blackfox]

[/indent]

I think this is only the beginning of a new problem.
Just had to be a wet blanket, didn't we?

problem or not, shias probably deserve power commensurate with their numbers, regardless of the instability it might cause.

right?

[skunk]

Just had to be a wet blanket, didn't we?

problem or not, shias probably deserve power commensurate with their numbers, regardless of the instability it might cause.

right?
I agree. But I foresee civil war.

[IJ Reilly]

I agree. But I foresee civil war.

In effect, one is going on now. Possibly the only relevant question at this point is who will win and what happens to the losers.

[Thomas Veil]

I agree. But I foresee civil war.*****Could be, but as the article itself implies, we're moving into uncharted territory here. A lot depends on how the inevitable Shia majority treats the Sunnis (and the Kurds as well). If things go badly, then yes, you could see a civil war, possibly also involving neighboring countries with Sunni majorities.

OTOH, countries like Saudi Arabia have been slowly -- verrrrrrry slowly -- inching towards western-style reforms of their own. It's possible this thing could swing Bush's way, and actually act as a catalyst to inspire changes to come faster.

One thing's for sure: somebody's going to be pissed off. The one commodity that flows even more abundantly than oil in that part of the world is testosterone. And while I think it's wise to watch out for the consequences that that article describes, I think it's too early to worry about anything in particular yet. Let's see how things go. Osama f---ing bin Laden can make "rulings" all he wants, but ultimately the people will decide which way they want to go.

(Oh, and sorry...I just couldn't resist the little asterisks. ;) )

[skunk]

Possibly the only relevant question at this point is who will win and what happens to the losers.
They will return to the United States, eventually.

sort of kidding...

[Chip NoVaMac]

Where did the 10% voter turn out figure come from on this mornings news then?

[3rdpath]

i'll further spread the wet blanket:

as much as i think the voter turn-out is impressive( chip, i believe the 10% figure was for iraqi's voting in the u.s.), there's going to be a large part of the population that will feel unrepresented. also, after the vote is tallied the electricity still won't work, water will still not flow and death and destruction will still permeate the landscape. the continuing hellish conditions will undermine whatever success democracy may represent.

i believe the military term for iraq is FUBAR.

[miloblithe]

The turnout is based on 14 million eligible voters. I guess that sounds about right. 12 million are under 18? (or ineligible for some reason).

[solvs]

I am hoping things turn out well there.

I don't believe the ends justify the means, but contrary to popular belief just because we don't support the way this war was waged, it doesn't mean we don't hope things turn out well in the long run. I hope they can vote, and we can get out as soon as possible before this gets worse, even if people start calling it a win for this administration. I just can't help feeling that this would have been a moot point if they had been smarter about this. Many of us had doubts about what Clinton did in Bosnia and Kosovo, but since things went so smoothly there, there wasn't much time to bother protesting.

I'm just afraid this is all going to turn out bad for us somehow. Well, worse since it's already gotten so bad. I just don't understand why we didn't finish up in Afganistan first. A win there would have made it easier to justify Iraq.

Guess the 'stans didn't have enough oil.

[pseudobrit]

I'm wondering if perhaps we could do an exchange programme with the winner of the Iraqi election.

We'll take Iraq's guy for a year and Iraq can have ours for four.

[mactastic]

38 year old news, but relevant nonetheless...
U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote :
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here.

[jadam]

We were just talking about this in my politics class today. But as far as representation for the sunnis is concerned, in order for the constitution not to be ratified, a minimum number of 3 provinces(or was it 2?) would have to not sign on it. Since this is the case, the constitution can not be passed unless it pleases the sunnis, the kurds, and the shias.

[diamond geezer]

Just a Blog, but

BAGHDAD, Jan 31 (IPS) - Voting in Baghdad was linked with receipt of food rations, several voters said after the Sunday poll.

Many Iraqis said Monday that their names were marked on a list provided by the government agency that provides monthly food rations before they were allowed to vote.

”I went to the voting centre and gave my name and district where I lived to a man,” said Wassif Hamsa, a 32-year-old journalist who lives in the predominantly Shia area Janila in Baghdad. ”This man then sent me to the person who distributed my monthly food ration.”

Mohammed Ra'ad, an engineering student who lives in the Baya'a district of the capital city reported a similar experience.

Ra'ad, 23, said he saw the man who distributed monthly food rations in his district at his polling station. ”The food dealer, who I know personally of course, took my name and those of my family who were voting,” he said. ”Only then did I get my ballot and was allowed to vote.”

”Two of the food dealers I know told me personally that our food rations would be withheld if we did not vote,” said Saeed Jodhet, a 21-year-old engineering student who voted in the Hay al-Jihad district of Baghdad.

There has been no official indication that Iraqis who did not vote would not receive their monthly food rations.

Many Iraqis had expressed fears before the election that their monthly food rations would be cut if they did not vote. They said they had to sign voter registration forms in order to pick up their food supplies.

Their experiences on the day of polling have underscored many of their concerns about questionable methods used by the U.S.-backed Iraqi interim government to increase voter turnout.

Just days before the election, 52 year-old Amin Hajar who owns an auto garage in central Baghdad had said: ”I'll vote because I can't afford to have my food ration cut...if that happened, me and my family would starve to death.”

Hajar told IPS that when he picked up his monthly food ration recently, he was forced to sign a form stating that he had picked up his voter registration. He had feared that the government would use this information to track those who did not vote.

Calls to the Independent Electoral Commission for Iraq (IECI) and to the Ministry of Trade, which is responsible for the distribution of the monthly food ration, were not returned.

Other questions have arisen over methods to persuade people to vote. U.S. troops tried to coax voters in Ramadi, capital city of the al-Anbar province west of Baghdad to come out to vote, AP reported.

Still, it's illegal not to vote in Aussie

[zimv20]

if this food subsidy thing is true, then i retract my "heartening" comment.

[Desertrat]

zim, I don't doubt there was some of this sort of thing. I doubt it was widespread. Certainly it wasn't any US doing, given the number of newsies running around hunting stories. I can see some Iraqi in a position of authority of some sort thinking, "They want people to vote? I know how to get them to vote!"

I guess it's one of those "Can't have it both ways." deals: There has been a lot of negative commentary coming out of Iraq during this last year. Okay, fine. But, so far, the "man in the street" interviews by some of these same newsies show happiness about the election. I don't think these newspeople were lying in the past and telling the truth now; nor do I believe they were telling the truth in the past and lying, now.

'Rat

[zimv20]

given the number of newsies running around hunting stories.
everything i've read and seen about reporting in iraq paints a picture of journalists holed up in their hotels, relying on military reports and hearsay to do their reporting. when the journalists do venture out, they're embedded and what they see and where they go is tightly controlled.

i fear mr. cheney has gotten his wish wrt reporters in a war zone -- at first glance, they appear to have a lot of latitude, but in reality, what they report is what the pentagon wants them to report.

consider an exception, like seymour hersh. how seriously is he taken and what sort of nod does he get from the larger news outlets?

[blackfox]

Here is another article to try and shed some light on the ration/voting situation. I do not know anything about the source, however, so take with a liberal helping of salt...

As one of the thousands of food-ration agents who are entrusted with handing out voter registration forms in Iraq, Fadhil Muhsen Salom has a feel for the mood of his Shiite Muslim neighborhood, and he described it as enthusiastic.

"The people here are ready and counting the days to reach Jan. 30," he said, referring to the historic date when Iraqis will vote freely for the first time in five decades.

Across Baghdad, another food-ration agent, Salah Mahmood, nearly recoiled in fear when asked about the voter registration drive.

With a little coaxing, Mahmood acknowledged that he's been threatened and no longer hands out registration forms in his mainly Sunni Muslim neighborhood.

"Twenty days ago, I found a letter stuck on the door of my shop warning me to stop distributing the forms," Mahmood said. If he ignores the warning, Mahmood said, he knows what will happen: "I'm going to be killed with my family."

Block by block, and neighborhood by neighborhood, Iraq's election process is unfolding in starkly different ways. In areas populated by Shiites, who are the majority in Iraq, the process is going relatively smoothly. In contrast, intimidation and fear are rampant in some areas where Sunnis reside.

The success of the registration drive - and the success of the parliamentary election itself - matters greatly. If enough Sunnis don't register, the Shiite population is certain to dominate the election, leaving the minority Sunnis without a voice or incentive to support the government. After such an election, Iraq might be rocked by charges of minority disenfranchisement, weakening hopes for quelling violence and reducing sectarian strife.

Sunnis, who dominated Iraq under Saddam Hussein, have violently opposed the U.S. occupation and the interim government. Sunni cities such as Fallujah have been at the heart of the insurgency.

Shiites reside largely in southern and central Iraq, and are at least half the nation's population. Sunnis, who ruled Iraq for decades under Saddam Hussein, make up significantly less. Ethnically distinct Kurds, who are also Sunni, compose about a fifth of the population and live in the north of the country.

To reach the most eligible voters, electoral officials decided to conduct registration through the thousands of sites where residents pick up food rations. Often in a neighborhood home or small shop, Iraqi families pick up monthly allotments of a few pounds of rice, wheat, sugar, tea and cooking oil. The food-ration agents generally handle 150 to 300 families each.

In Sunni areas of Baghdad, some food-ration agents said they were terrified of the threats against them. Such threats appear to be common.

"I received 250 registration forms and distributed only 50 before I received a yellow envelope," said an agent in the Amiriyah district of western Baghdad who was afraid to give his name. When he opened it, "there was a warning that if I do not stop distributing these forms I will have no one to blame but myself."

When he asked employees at the Trade Ministry's food rationing department what to do, he said, he was told quietly to stop handing out the forms.

A spokesman for the nine-member Electoral Commission, Adel al Lami, said he was aware of "the threats to some of the food-ration agents and also the refusal of others to distribute the voter registrations."

Eligible Iraqis who don't register through food-ration agents can go to any of 128 election centers in Baghdad to register, al Lami said, adding that voting officials are working with police to provide security for the centers.

"The commission is not a military unit, but we're in close contact with the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Defense," he said.

The deadline to register is Dec. 15.

It's not only threats that keep some Sunnis from registering. Many are bitterly angry over U.S. and British military occupation and a fierce offensive that began Nov. 8 to clear out insurgents from Fallujah, a city west of Baghdad in a region known as the "Sunni triangle." In many parts of the triangle, Sunni leaders said fighting was too intense for them to organize effectively, let alone campaign, for the election.

"We have around 3,000 families in this neighborhood, and in my personal opinion only 10 percent will vote," said Mahmood Naser, a district council chairman in the largely Sunni Amariyah neighborhood near the international airport.

A Fallujah resident displaced to Baghdad, 38-year-old Faysal Hamad, said voting in his home city was unlikely: "All the streets are stained with blood and still filled with dead bodies. ... It makes it impossible to have the elections."

In the bustling Karradah sector of central Baghdad, Khalid Waleed Khadum, a 45-year-old Shiite, arrived at a food-rationing center with his wife, sounding a positive note: "I'm very glad that I'll be able to vote. This is the best chance to express our freedom to select who we want in a democratic way and without pressure."

Salom, the food-ration agent who voiced enthusiasm for the registration drive, said residents in his northeast district, Sadr City, had pestered him to get their forms more rapidly, and that only five of 165 families had yet to register.

"I haven't heard about threats to other agents in this area. On the contrary, people here are helping us and helping each other to provide a suitable atmosphere for the elections," Salom said. "I'm encouraged by the elections because it is the only way to stabilize this country."

Doesn't really contradict anything that DG's blog posting put out, but I thought it might put the whole thing in a more understandable light, for all of us cynics.

I am still trying to figure out who thought of this idea. The Iraqi Ministry of Trade is in charge of rations, headed by ali alawi, but I couldn't find out any information about him or other members of the ministry. Electoral Officials may also have been involved, but I don't know who they are either. There is also the World Food Program (WFP) which was administered in part by the UN and originally was linked to the Oil-for-food-program, before the latter was discontinued.

Where the US fits in here, I don't know...could be the "invisible hand" or one of many...fwiw

http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/11/1707768.php

[solvs]

I'm wondering if perhaps we could do an exchange programme with the winner of the Iraqi election.

We'll take Iraq's guy for a year and Iraq can have ours for four.
I doubt they'd want him. :p

From what I've heard, most of the people watching the election, are watching from afar. Would be kind-of an ebarrassment if this was the case. Especially considering how many people still didn't vote. Unlike Fox News, I'll wait to hear the evidence before I pass judgement. I'm hoping it's not true.

Despite how we feel about Bush, most of us still want things to turn out well. I suppose we shall see.

[mactastic]

Link (http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000788083)

Everyone, of course, is thrilled that so many Iraqis turned out to vote, in the face of threats and intimidation, on Sunday. But in hailing, and at times gushing, over the turnout, has the American media (as it did two years ago in the hyping of Saddam's WMDs) forgotten core journalistic principles in regard to fact-checking and weighing partisan assertions?

It appears so. For days, the press repeated, as gospel, assertions offered by an election official that 8 million Iraqis went to the polls on Sunday, an impressive 57% turnout rate. I questioned those figures as early as last Sunday, and offered the detailed analysis below on Wednesday. Finally, on Thursday night, John F. Burns and Dexter Filkins of The New York Times reported that Iraqi election officials have quietly "backtracked, saying that the 8 million estimate had been reached hastily on the basis of telephone reports from polling stations across the country and that the figure could change."

Then, in Friday's paper, Burns and Filkins noted that one election commision official was "evasive about the turnout, implying it might end up significantly lower than the initial estimate." They quoted this official, Safwat Radhid, exclaiming: "Only God Almighty knows the final turnout now." They revealed that the announcement of a turnout number, expected to be released this weekend, has been put off for a week, due to the "complex" tabulation system.

I'll be delighted if that figure, when it is officially announced, exceeds the dubious numbers already enshrined by much of the media. But don't be surprised if it falls a bit short. The point is: Nobody knows, and reporters and pundits should have never acted like they did know when they stated, flatly, that 8 million Iraqis voted and that this represents a turnout rate of about 57%.

Carl Bialik, who writes the Numbers Guy column for Wall Street Journal Online, calls this "a great question ... how the journalists can know these numbers -- when so many of them aren't able to venture out all over that country." Speaking to E&P on Wednesday, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post -- one of the few mainstream journalists to raise questions about the turnout percentage -- referred to the "fuzzy math" at the heart of it.

Those with long memories may recall the downward-adjusted turnout numbers that followed violence-plagued elections in South Vietnam in 1967 and in El Salvador in 1984.

And one thing we now know for sure: the early media blather about a "strong" Sunni turnout has proven false. Adding a dose of reality, The Associated Press on Wednesday cited a Western diplomat who declared that turnout appeared to have been "quite low" in Iraq's vast Anbar province. Meanwhile, Carlos Valenzuela, the chief United Nations elections expert in Iraq, cautioned that forecasts for the Sunni areas were so low to begin with that even a higher-than-expected turnout would remain low.

In a rare reference to an actual vote tabulation, The New York Times on Thursday reports that in the "diverse" city of Mosul, with 60% of the count completed, the overall turnout seems slightly above 10%, or "somewhat more than 50,000 of Mosul's 500,000 estimated eligible voters."

This, of course, is no minor matter: Iraq's leading Sunni Muslim clerics said Wednesday that the country's election lacked legitimacy because large numbers of Sunnis did not participate in the balloting. Sure, many of them are simply sore losers (they lost an entire country) but that doesn't make their reaction any less troublesome for Iraq's future, especially with the cleric-backed Shiite alliance apparently headed for a landslide win.

Dexter Filkins of The New York Times warned Thursday that the widespread Sunni boycott "could even lead to the failure of the constitution; under the rules drafted last year to guide the establishment of a new Iraqi state, a two-thirds 'no' vote in three provinces would send the constitution down to defeat. The Sunnis are a majority in three provinces."

As for the overall Iraqi turnout: the more the better, but why is the press so confident in the estimates from an Iraqi commission with a clear stake in a high number?

For several days now, many in the media have routinely referred to the figure of 8 million Iraqi voters, following the lead of Farid Ayar, the spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission for Iraq. In the original press citations, what Ayar actually said (hedging his bets) was "as many as 8 million," which most reports quickly translated as "about 8 million," and then, inevitably, "8 million." A
Knight Ridder report was among the few that characterized this as only a guess.

Curiously, the day before the election, according to press reports, Ayar had predicted that 7 to 8 million would turn out, giving him some incentive to later spot the numbers in that neighborhood.

Also, one dares to ask: If the commission expected close to 8 million, and that's what happened -- and there was less violence on election day than anticipated -- why was the turnout greeted as such a surprise? Especially since U.S. and Iraqi leaders have spent months knocking the press for failing to report that the vast majority of regions in this country are safe and friendly.

The percentage of turnout supplied by Ayar came to 57% (happily rounded off by many in the press to 60%). This was based on what was described as 14 million potential voters divided by those 8 million who braved the potential bullets and bombs to go to the polls.

On Sunday, while hailing the millions going to the polls, I also raised questions about the 14 million eligible figure: was that registered voters, or all adults over 18, or what? Few on TV or in print seem to be quite sure, to this day.

It's a big difference. Since Sunday, countless TV talking heads, such as Chris Matthews, and print pundits have compared the Iraq turnout favorably to U.S. national elections, not seeming to understand that 80%-90% of our registered voters usually turn out. The problem in our country is that so few people bother to register, bringing our overall turnout numbers way down.

Howard Kurtz at least looked into the Iraqi numbers. In a Tuesday column, he observed that "the 14 million figure is the number of registered Iraqis, while turnout is usually calculated using the number of eligible voters. The number of adults in Iraq is probably closer to 18 million," which would lower the turnout figure to 45% (if, indeed, the 8 million number holds up).

To put it clearly: If say, for example, 50,000 residents of a city registered and 25,000 voted, that would seem like a very respectable 50% turnout, by one standard. But if the adult population of the city was 150,000, then the actual turnout of 16% would look quite different.

"Election officials concede they did not have a reliable baseline on which to calculate turnout," Kurtz concluded.

He also quoted Democratic strategist Robert Weiner as saying: "It's an amazing media error, a huge blunder. I'm sure the Bush administration is thrilled by this spin."

Bloggers quickly questioned Kurtz's upgrade to 18 million, noting that the population of the country, according to many sources, is 25 million or so, and the population is heavily teenaged and younger. But other current estimates run as high as 27.1 million.

The critics also hit Kurtz for not providing a source for his 18 million figure. But Kurtz told E&P on Wednseday, "I talked to a couple of experts, one of whom was Ken Pollack, from Brookings, and also ran it by two of my reporters in Baghdad. But it is definitely an approximation, just trying to give a sense that -- the one thing everyone I consulted seems to agree on -- is that the 14 million, the baseline, is a very fuzzy figure because there was no registration."

He said he thought it was Pollack, "who studies this for a living," who pegged the adult population of Iraq at 17 or 18 million. "Maybe he leaned more toward 18 million," Kurtz added. "I don't know if this is a definitive figure but I was just trying to explain the difference between whatever that figure is and the 14 million that was so widely used by all the media as if it were everyone eligible -- which means, to me, everyone over 18. When in fact it was this concocted number about passive registration based on who got rations. The point is, it's all fuzzy math, and I was just trying to illustrate that."

He added: "This was my stab at just trying to tell readers the 60% figure that had been so widely touted was hardly definitive, and it may be lower."

All credit to the brave Iraqis who did vote, and in many places they did turn out in droves. But it occurred to me, watching the moving TV images on Sunday of people standing in line outside polling places in Sunni hot spots, that maybe, as so often, the camera lied. In many embattled Sunni cities, we'd been told, many if not most polling places never opened. Wouldn't this likely cause a crush, by even a few hundred voters, at the relatively few places that did open?

Not that anyone, that I know of, was asking.


Time will tell. Not that the spin cycle isn't well under way...