Kurdistan Elections and Referendum Commission hears concerns of Kurdish parties

One of the parties’ main requests was that the names of voters registered at the polling stations which are repeated, who are deceased, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), Illegal, etc. be resolved.

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The six parties who made official complaints to the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC)—except for the Kurdistan Communist Party—in a letter on Monday made some requests of the Kurdistan Region’s Independent High Elections and Referendum Commission (IHERC).

“We direct this letter toward the Commission, to bring back trust for the people and express our worries for the democratic process in Kurdistan and the preservation thereof; we hope the IHERC’s performance is transparent and unbiased,” the letter read.

The IHERC is the organization that will be arranging the upcoming Kurdistan Region parliamentary elections planned to be held on Sep. 30.

The signatories of the letter were the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), Gorran (Change) Movement, Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal), Coalition for Democracy and Justice (CDJ), and the Islamic Movement.

One of the parties’ main requests was that the names of voters registered at the polling stations which are repeated, who are deceased, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), Illegal, etc. be resolved.

The signatories of the letter also ask that the newly-introduced electronic ballot-casting system is not used in the Kurdistan Region elections, describing the May 12 Iraqi parliamentary polls as “the worst election in the history of the new Iraq and Kurdistan.”

Immediately after the recent Iraqi elections, several parties began alleging voter fraud and called on the IHEC to investigate claims that the new voting system had been tampered with.

The IHEC had examined 1,436 claims, and only classified 103 instances of the complaints as legitimate, annulling the votes from those stations.

During a press conference, the IHERC confirmed it had heard the complaints regarding the voting system and agreed to review them according to the wishes of “most parties.”

IHERC spokesperson Shirwan Zrrar noted they had teams of experts working on the issue of voters’ names at the polling stations.

Zrrar also expressed the Commission’s readiness to hold all three elections (Kurdistan Presidency, Provincial Council, and the Parliament of Kurdistan) on the same day, if approved by the Kurdistan Regional Government.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany