Iraq’s 2025 elections: Unified card could boost turnout to 40%

Shafaq News/ Iraq's use of the unified card in the upcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled for October, will help boost voter participation to 40%, Fadhel Al-Gharawi, head of the Strategic Center for Human Rights, said on Wednesday.

Current statistics show that 28,079,889 voters are registered with the biometric card. However, several obstacles prevent widespread participation, including over 1.25 million uncollected cards and an estimated one million lost cards, Al-Gharawi stated. "Nearly two million people's fingerprints cannot be read, preventing them from voting with the current biometric system," he added.

According to electoral experts and based on this data, Al-Gharawi noted that the actual participation rate using the current biometric system would not exceed 20%.

Al-Gharawi proposed adopting the unified national card as the official voting document instead of the biometric card, which has 27,400,000 registered voters, confirming, “This would provide a more efficient and secure mechanism, boosting actual participation to around 40%.”

Addressing the challenges facing the upcoming elections, he affirmed that “they are still causing political, legal, and technical controversy.” Key concerns reportedly include amending or maintaining the current Election Law, adopting a multiple constituency system, determining the vote-counting method, the resignation of executive candidates, and redistributing parliamentary seats based on the latest population census.