Election body blames ‘some parties’ for confiscating Kirkuk voting data

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iraq’s elections commission announced only results from Kirkuk province are yet to be confirmed as some parties have confiscated flash drives used as part of the electronic audit system for the May 12 parliamentary election.

“The commission council has worked on the new servers which are in no way connected to any other internal or external networks. The voting data from the machine that was transmitted to a flash drive has to be transferred,” announced the commission

Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission released a nine-point statement on Sunday.

“The flash drives contain all the voting data, scans of the ballots, and other information, and passwords…” added the commission.

The commission said the electronic auditing process has been carried out for all Iraqi provinces except for Kirkuk “because supporters of some parties have confiscated the storage of polling stations associated with the elections commission.”

There are reports of widespread voter fraud during the Iraqi election on May 12. Six Kurdish parties are considering a boycott of the political process in Baghdad if there is not a re-vote or another solution.

Iraqi parties, the United Nations, and the Iraqi government also have all raised calls for an investigation.

Ballots from 113 polling stations in Kirkuk, Erbil, and Anbar have been rejected by the commission, many due to “technical difficulties.” 

Arab and Turkmen protesters have been demonstrating outside the Iraqi electoral commission offices in Kirkuk for 10 days, chanting “down with the commission.” They demand a manual recount of votes. 

The Turkmen and Arabs of Kirkuk each obtained three seats on May 12, up from two seats each in the previous election. However, they are not satisfied with the result and have accused the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of voter fraud. The PUK obtained six seats, down from eight Kurdish seats in the previous election.