Decision ‘08

Bad News? Sure Looks That Way

Jeez, I hope this doesn’t mean anything…but I took Juan Cole to task yesterday for not focusing on Middle East elections with a 99% favorable result, and here’s this:

Iraqi election officials said today that they were investigating what they described as “unusually high” vote totals in 12 Shiite and Kurdish provinces, where as many 99 percent of the voters were reported to have cast ballots in favor of Iraq’s new constitution, raising the possibility that the results of Saturday’s referendum could be called into question.

There’s no positive spin I can put on this…99% is well nigh impossible. A troubling, depressing report that I only hope is erroneous in some way…

UPDATE 3:37 p.m.: Nobody else is giving this much play yet…maybe it’s not as grave as it appears, but it certainly doesn’t sit well with me, if true…

5 Responses to “Bad News? Sure Looks That Way”

1 Sean P Says:
October 17th, 2005 at 5:28 pm
Color me skeptical.

The results in the Kurdish and Shiite regions of Iraq were never at issue — it was always pretty much assured that those regions would support the new Constitution. Committing fraud to push the “yes” total up a few percentage points makes about as much sense as Kerry stuffing ballots in New York, Massachusettes and California to win the 2004 election.
2 peter Says:
October 17th, 2005 at 6:12 pm
It sounds like the time when 321 dead Indians all voted for Mayor Daley in alphabetical order (or, as Joseph Kennedy said when asked about the razor thin margin in Illinois in 2960: “I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.”).

I’m inclined to cut the Iraqis some slack – at least they are moving towards a democracy, albeit in fits and starts –
3 Mark Says:
October 17th, 2005 at 6:20 pm
Maybe I’m pushing the panic button - I’m so hopeful about the nascent democracy there that I can barely stomach any setbacks…
4 Clint Says:
October 18th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
It’s actually not that hard for me to believe those numbers.

Given that the alternative to passing the Constitution is to elect a new set of delegates to spend another year making more compromises to the Sunnis (i.e. coming up with a Constitution that sacrifices the good of Kurds and Shiites at the expense of those who oppressed them for decades) ……

And, remember that we’re talking about cultures without the (perhaps uniquely American) idea of the nobility of dissent. When your whole community is headed to the polls for a vote they perceive as being about strengthening theirown community… I would guess that most Kurds saw a vote on a Federalist Constitution as essentially a vote on whether or not there ought to be an independent Kurdistan within Iraq, as opposed to no Kurdistan at all — of course they supported this overwhelmingly. An independent Kurdistan separate from Iraq wasn’t represented on the ballot.

This isn’t like a referrendum on Roe v Wade in San Francisco (which would probably turn out with 90-95% support) it’s more like a referendum on whether the Red Sox should move to Omaha. Anyone think that would get more than 1% in Boston? Or anywhere in New England?
5 Shoper Says:
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