ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The election commission in the Kurdistan Region is working to find a mechanism whereby election results are announced the same day and for that negotiations are being held with a vote counting company and various political parties.

The current term of parliament ends on November 6 when new elections must be held for a new legislature and the election commission says though they haven’t been officially told of an election date they’re preparing for the vote.

Member of the commission Jutyar Adil told Rudaw that whether elections are held in October or November they are fully ready for the process.

The charter of the election commission stipulates that the results must be announced within 72 hours though in Kurdistan Region and Iraq it has often taken days if not weeks for the results to be made public.

“Through technology and a deal with a company we aim to be able to announce the results minute by minute like the European countries,” Adil said.

“This is to prevent any kind of fraud and not to announce the results weeks later,” he added.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has already deposited $22million into the account of the election commission for this year’s process.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) is skeptical about being able to make public the election results on the same day.

“It is said that elections will be held on time this year and that’s possible, but technically it won’t be possible to announce the outcome the same day,” Sheikh Abdulrahman Qadir of PUK’s election bureau told Rudaw.

Karwan Jalal, member of the election commission said that companies from the United States, the UK and Norway have approached with proposals to install electronic ballot counting systems.

One of these companies was involved in the counting of votes in the recent US elections, he revealed.