Candidate claims lots of Iraqis abroad restricted from voting
Candidate claims lots of Iraqis abroad restricted from voting
29 Apr 2014
On last Sunday, a candidate for the Iraqi parliamentary elections revealed that he received information on the prevention of thousands of Iraqis in a number of Western countries and the United States to cast their ballots in the parliamentary elections because of the general procedures imposed by Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC).
One of the candidates, Adnan Francois Aoumraa said, “I received phone calls from the United States as Iraqi voters say that thousands of people will be deprived of voting because of IHEC procedures.”
He added, “According to the phone call, the deprivation includes thousands of Iraqis abroad in the United States, Canada, Australia, France and Sweden.”
“Officials at polling stations are demanding modern identity papers, as they prevented Iraqi voters who have passports of those countries based on Iraqi passports originally from casting ballots.”
Aoumraa added that some of the voters who voted in the previous parliamentary elections were also deprived under the pretext that the identities of Civil Status, which they hold are old and does not have the phosphorus seal.
He lodged his appeal, saying, “IHEC to be smoother with voters abroad and accept casting their ballots according to the archives in their possession, because most of them do not have modern archives or have passports issued by the countries where they live since several years.”
According to IHEC figures, about 785 thousand Iraqi expatriate are entitled to cast their ballots in the elections as 102 polling stations have been allocated for them in 19 countries.
It is noteworthy that the IHEC offices are distributed to the United States, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Turkey, Iran, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Egypt, Austria, Spain, France, Norway and New Zealand.
He said that those countries were selected based on statistics collected from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the displaced and the parliamentary elections of 2010.
iraqdirectory.com
