ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Political parties in the autonomous Kurdistan Region are concerned that new electronic cards that voters will use in Iraq’s parliamentary elections in April can encourage irregularities, because the system is not fully computerized.
Kurdish officials worry that the new cards contain several flaws. They note that because polling stations are not connected by computer, any card holder can vote more than once at different election booths.
Another concern has been that cards are issued on the basis of old voter lists, containing names of people who are long dead, or common names appearing more than once as different individuals.
“The fear is what happens to the additional cards that are not received by people; how about the duplicate cards and the dead people?” wondered Aram Sheikh Muhammad, an elections official of the Change Movement (Gorran).
“These are a number of issues that we need to have serious reservations about,” said Muhammad, attending a conference in Erbil to discuss the new system.
He complained that the Iraqi Higher Electoral Commission (IHEC) was not serious about addressing the issues.
Khasraw Goran, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party’s (KDP) election department, echoed the same concerns about repeated names and deceased voters, saying that the only merit of the cards was that they applied some new technology.
"When it comes to the names, numbers and the names of the voters, nothing is new in this (smart card),” he said. “Others can vote for the dead people, too,” he added.
Because it is incomplete, the system “is defective and paves the way for fraud," said Goran Azad, an MP of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). “But it’s important for the citizens to go and get their cards,” he advised.
Previously, the IHEC had explained that the new cards will be used only for elections this year, and that new ones with photos and biometrics would be issued later, to sort out issues of fraud and remove names of the deceased from voter rolls.
According to Shams, an NGO that has supervised previous elections, the new cards cost 132 million euros, and with the exception of placing the names of voters on the cards they do not add in any way to lessening fraud.
The Kurdish Awene newspaper, meanwhile, reported that a ruling party in the Garmyan area of the Kurdistan Region had offered to purchase the cards from people for $200 each.
And Radio Dengi Xelk in Kalar reported that, “a person has been arrested by security forces for buying the voter's electronic cards, but later was released on bail.”
Hemin Salih, director of the Gayandin (Connecting) organization, which held a news conference to discuss the new cards, told the Xendawn news website: "Most of the participants at the conference agreed that the smart cards should not be used for this election, or that if they are used the voter-names must be computerized.”
According to Salih, most participants agreed that, without the cards being computerized, the system not only will fail to prevent fraud, but would instead add to possible irregularities.
