Baghdad, Iraq – Millions of Iraqis streamed to the polls Saturday to vote on a new constitution, and there appeared to be strong turnouts of Sunni voters in some parts of the country.
But the Sunni turnout – high in some cities like Mosul, low in others like Ramadi – appeared to be insufficient to defeat the new charter, and Iraqi officials predicted it would pass.
Turnout appeared to be highest in Shiite and Kurdish areas, although in many places, including Baghdad, it appeared not to approach the levels seen in January, when throngs of voters stood in long lines to cast their ballots.
With little violence, turnout was more than 66 percent in the three most crucial provinces.
Iraqi officials said Saturday that they believed the vote was successful because strong support in Shiite and Kurdish areas gave it a good chance of passing.
“The constitution is a sign of civilization,” Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said after casting his ballot. “This constitution has come after heavy sacrifices. It is a new birth.”
While most in Iraq did not expect Sunnis to get the two-thirds vote in three provinces needed for the referendum to fail, by Saturday night, some were nervous that it might get close.
U.S. and Iraqi politicians hope that increased Sunni participation and national elections will isolate the Sunni-led insurgency that has killed thousands of Iraqis and threatened to destabilize the nation.
Many did not expect that Sunni participation would reach levels that could derail the constitution. Results are not expected for several days.
Although it was impossible to obtain turnout totals, the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq confirmed that there was high voter turnout in swing provinces, where Sunnis were believed to have mobilized their voter base: Salaheddin, Diyala and Nineveh.
The officials classified provinces where turnout was 34 percent to 66 percent as having intermediate participation, and 67 percent or above as having high turnout.
Of Iraq’s 18 provinces, eight had an intermediate level of turnout and seven had high turnout.
Two provinces that Sunnis would need to vote down the referendum had high turnout – Salaheddin and Nineveh – but it was not clear whether that reflected a large number of Sunni voters or a campaign by Shiites and Kurds to stop Sunnis from voting down the constitution.
There was no information about turnout in the insurgent hotbed of Anbar province, where 144 of 207 planned polling stations opened. That province will almost certainly go against the constitution.
The proposed constitution gives the Iraqi state a strong Islamic cast and provides broad guarantees for individual rights.
It grants the Kurds broad autonomy in northern Iraq and is expected to usher in a Shiite- dominated government after elections in December.
Both prospects – Kurdish autonomy and Shiite ascendancy – are viscerally opposed by many Sunnis. The Sunnis, believed to make up no more than 20 percent of Iraq’s population, enjoyed a privileged status in Iraq from its birth in 1920 until the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003.
The charter will fail if two- thirds of the voters in any three Iraqi provinces reject it.
If the constitution is rejected, it would throw into disarray the U.S. plans for the formation of a permanent government in Iraq next year.
If Sunnis got close to the two- thirds margin in three provinces needed to sink the constitution but failed, there would be the risk that the minority sect would become further marginalized from the political process.
On Saturday, the Sunni-led insurgency barely caused a ripple by Iraq standards.
By early evening, insurgents had launched 47 attacks on voting centers and American and Iraqi troops, according to Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a top U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. The figure was likely to increase as reports filtered in.
By contrast, however, during national elections Jan. 30, guerrilla fighters launched 347 attacks in a single day.
At schools turned into polling stations in Baghdad, residents were clearly more comfortable with the voting process than they were in the January elections.
Some voters said they were not sure what kind of changes the constitution would yield in their everyday lives.
“I voted ‘yes’ to the constitution,” said Haider Mohamed Ridha, 30, a computer shop owner in Najaf. “I didn’t read it. I just wanted to say ‘no’ to the terrorists.”
This report was compiled from Knight Ridder Newspapers, New York Times and Associated Press wire reports.
