Baghdad, Iraq – Iraqi election officials said Monday that they were investigating “unusually high” vote totals in 12 Shiite and Kurdish provinces, where as many as 99 percent of the voters were reported to have cast ballots in favor of Iraq’s new constitution, raising the possibility that the results of Saturday’s referendum could be called into question.
In a statement released Monday evening, the Independent Election Commission of Iraq said the results of Saturday’s referendum would have to be delayed “a few days” because the apparently high number of yes votes required that election workers “recheck, compare and audit” the results.
The statement made no mention of the possibility of fraud but said results were being re-examined to comply with internationally accepted standards. Election officials say that under those standards, voting procedures should be re-examined any time a candidate or a ballot question receives more than 90 percent of the vote.
One official with knowledge of the balloting said that the 12 provinces were either majority Shiite or Kurdish. Leaders from those communities strongly endorsed the proposed constitution. Some of those provinces, the official said, reported that 99 percent of the ballots counted were cast in favor of the constitution.
Shiites and Kurds largely support the constitution and make up about 80 percent of Iraq’s population.
None of the provinces cited for a closer look had Sunni majorities, the official said, although there were reports of similarly lopsided vote totals against the constitution in some Sunni areas.
“When you find consistently very, very high numbers, then that is cause for further checking,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Anything over 90 percent either way usually leads to further investigation.”
The announcement came as the results of Saturday’s referendum began to come into focus. About 10 million Iraqis cast ballots in the election, or about 64 percent of registered voters, said Barham Salih, the minister for planning. Preliminary results, he said, show that the constitution appears to have been approved by about 65 percent of Iraq’s voters.
Monday’s announcement seemed likely to trigger suspicions among many Iraqi voters, especially Sunnis, many of whom are deeply suspicious of the Shiite majority and of the Kurds. Such tensions could inhibit the delicate effort now underway to woo Iraq’s Sunni community, which forms the backbone of the insurgency, into the democratic process.
According to the statement, the election commission intended to re-examine many aspects of the balloting, including “examining random samples from ballot boxes,” the statement said. Such a process, if any irregularities were to be found, could drag out for several days, raising the possibility that the Dec. 15 election for a full-term parliament would have to be delayed.
The inquiry into the vote was largely a formality, triggered by the overwhelming support for the constitution, said Salih, the planning minister. He said the Iraqi election commission had assured him that there was, as yet, no reason to suspect any fraud.
“They are adamant that the evidence was overwhelming that the election was free and fair,” Salih said of the election commission members.
Salih said that he had expected the constitution to pass by a wide margin in the Shiite and Kurdish areas and to be overwhelmingly opposed in the Sunni areas.
The Independent Election Commission of Iraq, composed of six Iraqis and one non-Iraqi, has authority to overturn the results of the election if members decide that it was not conducted lawfully. To guard against the possibility of fraud and intimidation, the commission deployed some 57,000 election observers, drawn from local aid groups, and 120 representatives of political parties.