Overwhelming Turnout of Voters in Iraq
Some Iraqi polling stations stayed open for an extra hour on Thursday to allow late voters to cast their ballots after a big turnout caused queues in some places, election officials said.
At one Baghdad polling station, a Reuters reporter watched officials closing the doors as planned at 5 p.m. (1400 GMT). But Electoral Commissioner Hussein Hendawi later told Reuters that where there were still queues, ballot boxes would stay open until 6 p.m.
Hendawi said he believed that turnout had exceeded 10 million voters, or some 67 percent, well in excess of the 58 percent recorded in January when many among the once dominant Sunni Arab minority boycotted the U.S.-backed poll.
In Saddam Hussein’s home province around Tikrit, where few voted in January, the provisional turnout was 83 percent, an official in the local electoral commission said.
In the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah, so great was the turnout compared to the previous vote that polling stations ran out of ballot papers during the day, causing queues to form.
Source: Reuters
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