IHEC voids over a hundred polling stations’ votes
The Independent Electoral High Commission (IHEC) did not clarify on the extent of the effect the annulment of votes at the specified stations would have on the final results of the election.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) on Monday announced it would void the votes from over one hundred polling stations after complaints toward those stations were deemed as valid.
The Commission stated it had looked into 1,436 complaints from 53,000 ballot-casting stations that had been submitted on election-day.
The parliamentary election took place on May 12 with a 44.52 percent voter turnout rate.
Immediately after voting, several parties began alleging voter fraud and called on the IHEC to investigate claims that the newly-introduced electronic ballot-casting system had been tampered with.
The IHEC’s statement said there were 33 instances of what it described as “red complaints.” After auditing, they had decided to annul votes from 103 stations located in the provinces of Baghdad, Anbar, Nineveh, Salahuddin, and Erbil.
The IHEC defined “red complaints” as those that are in great violations of fraud and vote manipulation, especially those that affect the results of the outcome of the competing lists at the polling stations
The Commission did not clarify on the extent of the effect the annulment of the specified stations had on the final results of the election.
Editing by Karzan Sulaivany