Kurdistan Region election to kick off with early voting on Friday

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region’s electoral commission on Thursday announced that all preparations for the Sept. 30 regional election had concluded and that over 170,000 security force members would be able to participate in early voting the next day.

During a press conference, the Independent High Electoral and Referendum Commission (IHERC) said that, according to their latest numbers, 773 candidates from 29 political parties will compete for one of the 111 seats in the parliament of the Kurdistan Region, not to be confused with Iraq's national parliament in Baghdad.

Just over half of the Kurdistan Region's population of almost six million people will be eligible to vote.

From the total of 3,085,461 registered, 39 percent are from Sulaimani Province, 36 percent from Erbil, 23 percent from Duhok, and another two percent from the recently established Halabja Province. On Sunday, voters will be able to cast ballots at one of 5,941 local voting centers where their names are registered.

The number above includes the 170,469 military and police forces who will be eligible to vote on Friday at 99 voting centers in the early voting, a policy began in Iraq to free them up to provide security for elections. These will include members of the Asayish, Peshmerga, Zeravani, and police in all four provinces.

The commission said it could not include citizens in hospitals or prisons in the early voting, as has been done in the past. They would only be permitted to cast ballots on Sunday at local polling centers where their names are registered, which could effectively bar them from voting.

Unlike Iraq’s widely-disputed national election in May that employed the use of electronic vote-counting devices, the Kurdistan Region will count all ballots manually to quell concerns any party may have about potential vote-rigging, election tampering, or other fraud. A new regulation also stipulates that the commission is charged with taking a close-up photograph of each voter before ballots are cast.

For additional transparency, 22 local and international organizations have registered to observe the process.

Campaigning will be permitted until 7:00 am Friday morning, one hour before early voting begins. After the planned closing of all voting centers at 6:00 pm on Sunday, IHERC employees will begin separating votes by party and then, the day after, start the process of counting those cast for each candidate.

Editing by John J. Catherine