A representative of the electoral commission in Iraq has said that it has had to throw out less than 1% of the ballot boxes due to fraud, so if the unverified preliminary results are indeed correct, this won’t affect the outcome of the election.

BAGHDAD ???????? Iraqi officials Monday concluded an inquiry into allegations of widespread fraud in the Dec. 15 elections by annulling returns from fewer than 1% of the ballot boxes, and said the action was unlikely to alter the overall result.

The ruling by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq failed to placate secular and Sunni Arab parties that are set to form a minority in the 275-seat parliament. They had claimed that they were cheated by systematic intimidation of voters and tampering with ballot boxes.

Although the inquiry verified isolated examples of such irregularities, “the level of fraud was small,” Hussein Hindawi, a commission member, said in rejecting the complaining parties’ demand for a rerun of the election. “It’s a question of maybe one, two or three seats.”

Hindawi echoed a judgment of United Nations observers that the election was generally transparent and credible. The official Iraqi ruling paved the way for a release of complete returns in the coming days ???????? the next step in a laborious process of forming Iraq’s first long-term government since the U.S.-led ouster of Saddam Hussein nearly three years ago.
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Ali Timimi, a spokesman for the complaining parties, dismissed the report as a cover-up.

“There was systematic forgery all over Iraq, not just in these 227 ballot boxes,” he said. “It was well organized.”

Hindawi said he and other election officials had sifted through 1,985 complaints but found just 58 allegations of “red violations” ???????? instances of tampering that could alter the tally in one or more of the ballot boxes.

All 58 allegations were investigated and most were proved, he said, leading to the annulment of ballot boxes from scattered polling places in the ethnically mixed cities of Baghdad, Kirkuk and Mosul; the city of Irbil in the Kurdish region; the largely Sunni provinces of Salahuddin, Diyala and Al Anbar; and the Shiite-dominated southern city of Basra.

Results from entire polling stations, with several ballot boxes each, were thrown out in Baghdad and Diyala, he said. Fifty-three boxes across Iraq and several set up for absentee voting by Iraqis in Turkey were invalidated after being found stuffed with more ballots than voters registered to cast them, he added.

The commission upheld two complaints of partisan interference in the hand-counting of ballots ???????? in largely Shiite Dhi Qar province and in Diyala ???????? but rejected five similar complaints elsewhere. It threw out two complaints of alleged tampering with ballot boxes as they were being trucked from polling places to provincial capitals.

Hindawi’s report did not cast partisan blame for any of the confirmed fraud.

This is where the “but” comes in. Whatever the electoral commission says will have little influence on how Maram alliance receives it. One of the main accusations against the commission, after all, is that it’s a pawn of the governing Shia UIA party. What now? Well, the international observers sent to observe the audit of the results will be issuing their report on Thursday.

Interestingly, the report will only be issued once the observers have left the country, which alludes to the possibility that one side in the standoff could be upset with their findings. If the report does find evidence of wrongdoing that significantly alters seat allocations, it will be another dent in the credibility of the current government, and will certainly change the landscape of the current negotiations for the next government. If the report mirrors what the government announced today, it will be a blow to the steam that Maram has gained since December because it has put considerable stake in the credibility of the international observers. They called for them, after all.

Afterward, they’ll have a couple of days to appeal, which means up to another couple of weeks until final results can be announced. Delay, delay, delay. I’m not exactly sure what’s taking them so long, because they’ve had to delay the results several times already. I don’t even want to speculate, else I run the risk of becoming too conspiratorial. The big effect of all of this delaying is that it’s giving the parties a lot more time to negotiate the makeup of the new government. According to the new constitution, the Council of Representatives have two months to form the government. Because of the delays, they’ve effectively gained an additional month to a month and a half to negotiate.

Furthermore, the U.S. has certainly thrown its weight behind the Sunni parties in recent weeks because it is convinced that their inclusion will stifle the insurgency. This theory seems to be playing out correctly and the Sunnis are getting more negotiating power for their position. The UIA is reacting by saying that each party should get as many ministry spots as it got in votes; however, the best way to reconcile with the Sunnis (not to mention stopping the outcry about fraud) by giving them what they perceive is their fair share in the government. Recall that it will take 2/3 of the vote to form a government, and likewise the parliament can be dissolved with only a 1/3 vote.

Iraq the Model has more on the ongoing negotiations and political environment in the country.