There are reports that some voting irregularities have been found after this weekend's election in Iraq.

Iraq's election commission announced Monday that officials were investigating "unusually high" numbers of "yes" votes in about a dozen provinces during Iraq's landmark referendum on a new constitution, raising questions about irregularities in the balloting.

Meanwhile, word of the review came as Sunni Arab leaders repeated accusations of fraud after initial reports from the provinces suggested the constitution had passed. Among the Sunni allegations are that police took ballot boxes from heavily "no" districts, and that some "yes" areas had more votes than registered voters.

A prominent Sunni Arab politician, Saleh al-Mutlaq, claimed Diyala in particular had seen vote rigging. He said he was told by the manager of a polling station in a Kurdish district of Diyala that 39,000 votes were cast although only 36,000 voters were registered there.

Al-Mutlaq said soldiers broke into a polling station in a Sunni district of the Diyala city of Baqouba and took ballot boxes heavy with "no" votes and that later results showed a "yes" majority. His claims could not be independently verified.

"Bottom line, we can say that the whole operation witnessed interference from government forces," he said.

Now where have we heard this before?

An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said.

Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush's total should have been recorded as 365.

Sweet! We're spreading American-style democracy already! I believe Diyala is Arabic for Ohio.

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posted by Jonathan @ 10:48 PM Monday, October 17, 2005   
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