As Iraq wraps up election recount, is a new government in sight?

Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) finished the manual recounting of votes on Aug. 6 amid an outcry over potential fraud that involved ballots in Anbar province and Baghdad and Kirkuk cities, as well as districts in the Iraqi Kurdistan region and all ballots allotted for Iraqis who live abroad. The IHEC decided to cancel the recount process for the al-Rusafa district in Baghdad, as the ballots and machines used to submit and count votes were damaged in a fire following the election.

Laith Jabr Hamza, the official spokesman for the IHEC, addressed the decision to cancel the recount in this area, saying that the commission, which consists of select judges, came to the decision after “reading the record for the count proceedings by the judge who was instituted to oversee the IHEC in al-Rusafa. This took place after the fire that razed the depositories [on June 10].” The decision was made due to the fact that all recording and biometric verification devices, as well as the ballots, were completely devastated in the fire, which rendered a manual recount impossible.

The Iraqi parliament asked for a manual recount back in June in light of a report by the Iraqi government that revealed a number of violations during the elections. This was followed by the dismissal of the former commissioners who were replaced by nine judges to chair the IHEC according to a decision by Iraq’s Judicial Council. The nine judges were tasked with overseeing the manual recount.

Of note, Reuters published a report Aug. 5 that contained documents revealing that the Federal Board of Supreme Audit expressed concerns over the machines used in the elections to the IHEC on May 9, three days before the scheduled elections. However, the commission disregarded those concerns where accusations revolve now around alleged tampering with the machines, which were imported by IHEC from the South Korea-based Miru Systems.