Mosul IDPs voting issue resolved by Electoral Commission

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Currently inhabiting Bardarash, a district in Duhok, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) of Mosul were having issues casting their votes on Saturday because the forms which contained their names had not arrived at the designated polling stations.

“About 8,000 Mosul IDPs are eligible to vote, and two polling stations have been prepared for them to vote at, but they can’t because Mosul’s voting form which contains their names has not arrived at the specified stations,” according to a Kurdistan 24 reporter in Bardarash.

“We are being sent from one place to another to vote but our names are not listed at those stations and, as a result, we can’t vote,” one of the voters said.

“My name and those of another one hundred people are registered at the al-Karama neighborhood in Mosul, but we can’t return there due to the security issues,” another voter stated. “We ask to be allowed to vote here [in Bardarash’s stations].”

Kurdistan 24 asked Ali Qadir, an Electoral Commission official in Erbil, how the Commission was planning to respond to the situation in Bardarash and IDPs in general.

“So long as they have their voting documentations they will be able to vote, even if they can’t find their fingerprints, or their names are not [registered] at the polling stations,” he explained.

Qadir had announced earlier that the electronic devices are programmed to shut off at 6:00 p.m. and no extensions would be given under any circumstances, though some media reports contradict his claim.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany