Iraq's Supreme Court rules yes on election recount, no on canceling votes

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iraq's Supreme Court announced on Thursday that it had ruled on a controversial vote in parliament about May's national election, approving a manual recount but not the decision to annul thousands of votes.

The head of the Supreme Judicial Council, Judge Medhat al-Mahmoud, read a statement to the press that characterized the order to implement a full manual recount of votes as "correct."

He said that the court, however, sees the cancellation of ballots cast by security forces in the Kurdistan Region, Iraqis living abroad, and those living in camps as not in line with the constitution, and ruled that they should be counted. Nullifying them, the court's decision read, would be a "waste of these votes and a confiscation of the will of the voters."

Police, Peshmerga, and other security force members in the Kurdistan Region have recently staged multiple public protests against the parliament’s decision to cancel all "special," or early voting in the region. 

It has been unclear which of several recent contested decisions by various governing bodies have been legitimate in the past two weeks. Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) is charged with overseeing elections in the country, and parliament is not given jurisdiction over them.

The Higher Judicial Council (IHJC) sided with parliament's decision in full the day after it was voted on, but neither does it not have final say on elections in Iraq.

That is the job of the Supreme Judicial Council, so today's ruling would appear to be the appropriate final word on how the election will be handled.

After the parliament resolution was previously approved by the IHJC, nine judges replaced IHEC commissioners to manage the recount. Judge Mahmoud said the Supreme Judicial Council supported this decision as well, so the process will presumably continue without interruption.

Calls for a recount have been mounting since the election was held, with multiple charges of electoral fraud being bandied about, though the exact nature and mechanism of the alleged fraud is often not specified.

The most common claim is the malfunction or intentional misuse of electronic voting devices, used at Iraqi polling stations for the first time in May's election, hence the overwhelming calls for a manual recount.

According to the court's decision, it was decided to nullify electronic results in favor of "the method of manual counting for all polling stations for the whole of Iraq."