Ambiguities over Voter Numbers Remain a Hurdle For Kurdistan Polls

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Ambiguities over the number of registered voters in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region remains yet another hurdle to elections that have already been twice postponed.

There has been intense debate over voter numbers which have shown an unusual increase in the province of Duhok and Erbil and over deceased citizens whose names remain on the lists. There is also a problem with identical names, which appear more than once, but with officials unclear whether they are repeated in error or if they belong to different people who share the same names.

A report by the regional parliament found that during the last 12 years nearly 180,000 people had passed away in the Kurdistan Region, but that only 440 names had been removed from  registration lists.

After 39 MPs asked that 94,000 repeated names on the lists be erased, the election commission explained that the names were not repeated, but identical to names of people living in other parts of Iraq.

Sarbast Amedi, Head of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) claimed that in Suleimani alone, 80,487 names are identical to those in Kirkuk, Tikrit, and Diyala.

According to IHEC data, there are many identical names in Iraq registration lists, where the number of names is just under two million.

“We have proof that there are only 1,700 identical names and 5,968 repeated names in Erbil,” said Sarwar Abdulrahman, an MP from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

The once-postponed presidential and parliamentary elections were scheduled for September, but the PUK and its ruling partner the Kurdistan Democratic Party agreed in June to delay the polls once more.

 “The problem is not only the repeated names; during the last election the dead voted as well,” claimed Goran Azad, a PUK MP. “Ten thousand dead voted, because their names were kept in the voting list and their votes were cast,” he alleged.