Iraq’s electoral commission: Final results will be announced after appeals are resolved

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) announced on Tuesday that the final results of Sunday's national parliamentary elections will be announced in full after various motions brought to appeal initial tallies are fully resolved.

Commission Chairman Jalil Adnan explained in a press conference in Baghdad that "preliminary results were according to what appeared in the electronic devices for accelerating results," and do not include a large portion of total ballots cast.

The numbers publicized so far, he said, "are not final, and the final results of the elections will be announced after the appeals are resolved."

He pointed out that ballots from 3,100 stations will be sorted manually at the National Center in Baghdad, stressing that the votes that will be counted represent 6 percent of the total, "and they are the ones that malfunctioned on the day of voting."

He said that the stations that will be counted represent 60,000 votes distributed across all provinces, and added, "whoever says that the results are not consistent with his votes can submit an appeal."

Preliminary results showed the victory of the Sadrist bloc, led by firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Following its monitoring of early voting, the European Election Observation Mission (EUOM) published an early version of its report containing a general assessment of the process.

Read More: Iraqi Election 2021: EU election observation mission releases its “preliminary” results

It said that the vote was "technically well-managed and competitive, despite challenges as regards level playing field for candidates and problematic aspects of the legal framework," one official said of the polls, which she called "largely peaceful and orderly."