SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraqis are voting in a general election to elect a new parliament on Sunday in the fifth such vote since a U.S.-led invasion toppled dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Polls were opened across Iraq at 7:00 a.m. and will close at 6:00 p.m. on Sunday.
As of mid-day, the turnout has reached 19 percent across Iraq, according to the electoral commission.
It has reached 22 percent in Duhok, 21% in Erbil, 16% in Sulaimani and 22% in Kirkuk, the commission’s figures showed.
The election is being held several months early under a new law designed to help independent candidates – a response to mass anti-government protests two years ago.
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.
As many as 24,029,927 people are eligible to vote in 8,273 polling stations in Iraqi provinces and the Kurdistan Region. Voters will present a biometric card for what was conceived as a fully electronic voting process.
As many as 3,226 candidates are in the running, including nearly 950 women.
One quarter of seats are reserved for female candidates, and nine for minorities including Christians and Yazidis.
A new single-member constituency system is supposed to boost independents and reduce traditional political blocs, largely centered on religious, ethnic and clan affiliations.
Nearly 900 U.N. and EU observers and around 46,800 internal spectators monitor the election process. As many as 1,500 media outlets inside Iraq and more than 300 international journalists cover the election, according to electoral commission.
The parliament’s seats are divided on the provinces as: 15 seats in Erbil, 18 in Sulaimani, 11 in Duhok, 12 in Kirkuk, 69 in Baghdad, 31 in Nineveh, 14 in Diyala, 12 in Saladin, 25 in Basra, 19 in Dhi Qar, 17 in Babil, 15 in Anbar, 12 in Najaf, 11 in Karbala, 11 in Qadisiyyah, 11 in Wasit, 10 in Maysan and seven in Muthanna.
On Friday, more than 821,000 voters out of 1,196,524 members of the Iraqi and Kurdish security forces, prisoners and displaced persons cast their ballots in the special voting for Iraq’s parliamentary election.
This year nationals living abroad will not be voting.
Groups from Iraq’s Shia Muslim majority have dominated since the overthrow of Saddam’s Sunni Arab-dominated government, but they are divided among themselves. There are also groups representing the Sunni Arab and Kurdish people in the Kurdistan Region.
*This story was updated at 04:28 p.m. EBL time
