06-02-2005 00:11									#391
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I try to stay out of conversations with people like you.

	06-02-2005 00:14									#392
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Try harder.

	06-02-2005 01:29									#393
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As I seem to be on everyone's ignore list, I ask my question again:

quote: Originally posted by Chemical Ollie This might be somewhat late to ask, and I'm too lazy to look backwards in this long thread, but who won? I have only heard media report about " the iraqi people won, by casting their votes despite death threats" But what political movement won, and what's their agenda? And what's the agenda of their opposition, that took part in the election but lost? Iraq voted just 2-3 years ago, and Saddam got close to 100 % of the votes. This time, I would believe American puppets got most of the votes. What's the freedom of voting on a dozen parties with the same agenda?

	06-02-2005 01:38									#394
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The counting isn't over, but the Shiite coalition is way ahead. The US backed party is far behind.

Early Returns

	06-02-2005 01:45									#395
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quote: Originally posted by Kidicious The counting isn't over, but the Shiite coalition is way ahead. The US backed party is far behind. Early Returns

What do you mean "the counting isn't over"? The election was a whole week ago! You mean US is exporting that crap too?

Where I come from, election results are settled within 3 hours.

	06-02-2005 01:49									#396
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I don't know what the problem is. I guess they don't have the technology to do a fast count.

	06-02-2005 01:57									#397
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You don't need technology, you need manpower. In Sweden, 6 million votes are counted manually within 3 hours. Why would manpower be a problem in Iraq?

	06-02-2005 02:01									#398
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Yeah, at local level, and you have a trained organisation to handle it. It isn't sweden we are talking about.

	06-02-2005 02:02									#399
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According to the bbc it could take up to a week. They don't say why.

	07-02-2005 20:42									#400
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an interesting WaPo article on the elections impact.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...=1802&ncid=1473

	07-02-2005 20:43									#401
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quote: Originally posted by Chemical Ollie You don't need technology, you need manpower. In Sweden, 6 million votes are counted manually within 3 hours. Why would manpower be a problem in Iraq?

yeah, just bring in any unemployed person off the street, dont check them for background, train them, make certain theyre commited to a fair vote, etc.

And dont make sure to have trained supervisors either.

	07-02-2005 20:47									#402
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Who said the trained supervisors have to be natives?

	07-02-2005 20:50									#403
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quote: Originally posted by lord of the mark yeah, just bring in any unemployed person off the street, dont check them for background, train them, make certain theyre commited to a fair vote, etc. And dont make sure to have trained supervisors either.

well seeing as how the NGOs wont venture in, and we dont want US troops doing it, i think they have to be natives. Aside from which I dont think putting foreigners in charge will add to legitimacy. So it pretty much has to be Iraqis. Given a limited supply of trained Iraqi supervisors, that means a limited number of counters, and a long count.

	08-02-2005 00:41									#404
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/i...html?oref=login

quote: The first voting returns from northern Iraq showed today that the main Kurdish party made significant gains in the country's first contested elections eight days ago, improving their standing from an insignificant portion of the votes to about 25 percent of those that have been counted so far. The main Shiite religious party, the Iraqi United Alliance, dropped its overall tally from about 67 percent to closer to 51 percent, the returns showed. The secular party led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is running third, with about 13 percent.

Updated vote tallies. Assuming that this distribution holds, the UIA has to bring either the INA or one of the Kurdish Parties (or just about everyone else) in order to dictate the gov't. So, it wouldn't have free reign over the PM, the President, and the Constitution. However, it certainly would be able to pass just about any law it wants.

From the same article:

quote: The Shiite party is also leading in Saladin Province, the Sunni-dominated region that is home to Saddam Hussein; the Kurds are running a close second. The vote totals appeared to show that the turnout was extremely low, which may reflect many Sunnis' decision not to vote.

More evidence of a very successful boycott on the part of the AMS et al. More info about that:

http://middle-east.news.designerz.c....html?d20050207

quote: The United Iraqi Alliance -- blessed by top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani -- mustered more than 27,000 votes, while its closest challenger was an alliance of Kurdish parties. The total number of registered voters in Salaheddin is not known, but figures provided after the votes were counted from 80 percent of the province's polling stations hinted at a very low turnout. On election day, the commission had announced turnout figures based on anecdotal evidence suggesting 50 percent of registered voters had taken part. But, in the polling stations counted so far, a total of just 124,000 people cast a vote. Salaheddin is a large province just north of Baghdad that includes Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit and the other Sunni Arab cities of Samarra and Baiji. But the province also includes several Shiite and Kurdish enclaves. Sunni Arab parties largely boycotted the January 30 elections. Militant groups threatened bloody retaliation against anyone who took part. The Iraqiyun list of President Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni Arab, came third, while the list of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite, trailed in fifth position with 13,035 votes.

Frustratingly written article. Let's turn this into a Fermi problem (well, a non-physical Fermi problem). How did Pachachi's list do? Is it number four? Six? Let's assume that it was considerably less than Allawi's list - 8,000 or so, and add another 4,000 or so for the smaller Sunni Arab parties. Then, that would mean that the Sunni parties got around a fifth of the vote. I can't find anything about the ethnic distribution, except that Sunni Arabs are the majority in the province. So, let's say, they're 50%. Assuming minimal cross-sectarian voting, that'd mean their seats in the national assembly will be under-represented by roughly 60%. Granted, I pulled all this out of my ass, but that's not a catastrophically bad number (well, it is, but it could've been worse).

US Iraqi voting:

http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=6209

quote: New York (KurdishMedia.com) 05 February 2005: The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI) has released provisional results from Out-Of Country Voting (OCV). In the United States, which offered 7 polling centers, 24,332 votes were cast, 99.78% of which were deemed valid. While the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shii-dominated list expected to outperform other parties in Iraq, received the highest percentage of votes at 31.69%, a close second was the Rafidain National List, an Assyrian/Christian list headed by Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM) Secretary General Yonadam Kanna, finished with 28.82% of the votes, reflecting the large representation of the Assyrian/Christian community in the US. Third place was the Kurdistan Alliance List with 16.94%. The National List, a coalition headed in the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), also made a strong showing, receiving 8.19% of the votes. Prime Minister Ayad Allawis list, called the Iraqi List, received 4.23% of the votes, while the Iraqis (Iraqiyoon) list of President Ghazi al-Yawar (and also includes outspoken Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan) received only 0.38%.

This won't matter very much (24,000 votes is not that much when you get down to it), but the distribution is certainly interesting. And I'm glad that American Iraqis voted for the ICP over the INA 2-1.

It'll also be interesting what role the Assyrians, Turkmen, ec. play.

	08-02-2005 00:54									#405
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my sense continues to be that most Sunni Arab voting was in west Baghdad, perhaps also in Basra, where it was significantly less dangerous to vote than in core Sunni arab provinces of Anbar, Salahadin, and rural western Nineveh province. OTOH the voting irregularities in parts of urban Mosul represent a failure to allow Sunni arabs (as well as others) who wanted to vote to do so, and thus are a major screw up. Note that the WaPo article I link to above indicates a tipping of the mood in Baghdad only - and note that since the election there has been a decline in insurgent attacks in Baghdad, but continued and intense attacks in Mosul, Anbar, and elsewhere in the Sunni triangle.