IHEC: uncounted ballots might change the results
Shafaq News/ Only 94% of the ballots cast on the general polls yesterday, Sunday, has been counted, chair of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) Judge Jalil Adnan said, indicating that the remaining ballots are maybe game-changing.
In a press conference he held earlier today, Monday, the chair of IHEC's board of Commissioners said that 6% of the votes are yet to be counted.
"The remaining results and the appeals filed by the parties and candidates might alter the final result," he said, "the only reliable result is the final announcement after submitting the appeals and looking into them."
Iraq logged the lowest voters' turnout since 2005, with less than 45% of the Iraqi citizens eligible to vote casting their ballots yesterday, Sunday.
In a press conference held in the Iraqi capital city, Baghdad, earlier today, Monday, the chair of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), Jalil Adnan Khalaf, said that 9,077,770 Iraqis have participated in yesterday's election.
Voter turnout is 41%, Khalaf added.
That’s down from 44% in the 2018 elections, which was an all-time record low in the post-Saddam Hussein era, signaling widespread distrust of the country's leaders and the vote for a new parliament.
The weekend's election was held months ahead of schedule as a concession to a youth-led popular uprising against corruption and mismanagement. But the vote was marred by widespread apathy and a boycott by many of the same young activists who thronged the streets of Baghdad and Iraq’s southern provinces in late 2019, calling for sweeping reforms and new elections.
Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's party has swept an Iraqi election, coming first and increasing the number of seats he holds in parliament, according to initial results, officials and a spokesperson for the Sadrist Movement.
A count based on initial results from several Iraqi provinces plus the capital Baghdad, verified by local government officials, suggested Sadr had won more than 70 of the 329 seats in parliament.
A spokesperson for Sadr's office said the number was 73 seats.
