Iraqi Elections

According to Juan Cole and the AFP:
An unreleased State Department study of last month summarized by AFP last Thursday found that:Only 32 percent of Sunni Muslims are "very likely" to vote.Among Shiites, 87 percent said they are "very likely" to vote.Only 12 percent of Sunni Arabs consider the elections "legitimate."Only 12 percent of Sunni Arabs think the elections will be completely fair.52 percent of Shiites think the elections will be completely fair. 61% of Sunni Arabs are very concerned about their family's safety.24% of Shiites are very concerned about their family's safety.Among Shiites, 76% would boycott if a figure such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani told them to.Only 32 percent of Sunni Arabs said they would boycott simply because a religious figure asked them to.88% of Sunnis would stay home if they felt voting would put them in danger.38% of Shiites say they would stay home if their are threats of violence against polling stations.AFP notes:
' The poll was conducted in the mixed ethnic cities of Baghdad and Kirkuk; the mainly Sunni cities of Baquba and Tikrit; the Kurdish cities of Arbil and Sulaimaniyah; the mid-Euphrates Shiite cities of Hilla, Najaf, Diwaniyah, Kut and Karbala; and the southern Shiite cities of Basra, Nassiriyah, Ammara and Samawa. '

I've also heard that it's very likely that the Shiites will win and have some pretty sweeping changes in mind if they obtain control. Allawi also believes that "pockets" of Iraq won't be able to vote at all, and the estimate on the number of people we're talking about is somewhere in the 3 million range. Basically, legitimacy, fairness, security and trust are all missing from this election. Sort of sounds like our election process.

Oh and a brief word on that, the folks in Ohio that were contesting the election finally gave up yesterday. I love that the Bush administration immediately jumped on them saying they knew they'd lose, but in truth, they realized that so close to the inaugural that any change in the election would be difficult to litigate. I think I believe them a bit more. There's plenty of evidence that there were some fraudulant dealings in our election. The thing is that just with the 2000 election, dissenters are in the wrong area to complain. They should be attacking election procedures, proving faults and getting those issues resolved. This our guy won, not yours battle goes nowhere but to make the guy that finally gives up no chance to press for reform.