Security forces begin early voting in Iraqi election

Early voting began on Thursday morning across Iraq and the Kurdistan Region for parliamentary elections which will be held on Saturday.

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Early voting began on Thursday morning across Iraq and the Kurdistan Region for parliamentary elections which will be held on Saturday.

Special voting centers opened at 7 am for security forces, needed on election day to secure public polling stations amid threats by the Islamic State (IS) that it would target anyone casting a ballot.

Saturday's elections will be the first since the group’s military defeat was announced in December 2017.

Iraq announced on Wednesday that a 24-hour curfew would go into effect from midnight on Friday and last the entire day on Saturday. Airports and border crossings will also close for 24 hours, as an additional security precaution.

Security forces included in Thursday's vote, in which prisoners also take part, include those from the Interior and Defense ministries, Peshmerga, and counter-terrorism units.

Voting is scheduled to last until 6 pm but could be delayed amid reports of several delays caused by malfunctioning fingerprint voting devices, introduced this year by Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC). 

The commission, tasked with overseeing elections in the country, has said that out of Iraq's total 943,639 potential early voters, 210,000 are in the Kurdistan Region.

Absentee voting for Iraqi citizens outside of the country also begins Thursday and will last until late Friday evening. According to IHEC, over 900 thousand Iraqis abroad are eligible to vote in 21 countries.

Nearly 7,000 candidates representing different parties are competing to fill 329 seats in the Iraqi Parliament.

IHEC's regulations require campaigning to cease Thursday at midnight.

Editing by John J. Catherine