SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraq’s electoral commission said on Saturday results of manual and electronic counts in the special voting for the country’s early election matched by 100 percent.
More than 821,000 voters cast their ballots in the special voting for Iraq’s parliamentary election on Friday. As many as 1,196,524 members of the security forces, prisoners and displaced people were eligible to vote.
The electoral commission said on Friday night that the turnout was 69 percent.
Spokeswoman for Independent Hight Electoral Commission (IHEC) Jumana al-Ghalay said the IHEC began hand counting for polling stations that were selected by the commission following the end of the special voting on Friday.
“Results of the manual counting in those stations matched by 100 percent with results of the electronic voting,” al-Ghalai said in a statement.
Iraqi voters are to elect a new parliament on Sunday in the fifth such vote since a U.S.-led invasion toppled dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
This year nationals living abroad will not be voting.
A total of 329 seats are up for grabs in the election, which was moved forward from 2022 as a concession to youth-led pro-democracy protests that erupted in late 2019.
There are fears voter turnout could drop below the 44.5 percent figure registered in 2018.
More than 25 million citizens are eligible to vote. They are supposed to present a biometric card for what was conceived as a fully electronic voting process.
More than 3,240 candidates are in the running, including 950 women.
One quarter of seats are reserved for female candidates, and nine for minorities including Christians and Yazidis.
