Newsfilter: Iraq votes for a permanent government. Despite warnings from insurgents and al Qaeda that the elections are "the work of Satan", estimates are that over 10 million of the 15 million eligible voters have cast ballots for their first non-interim government, including many Sunni Muslims at the urging of their leaders.
posted by loquax on Dec 15, 2005 - 172 comments

Britain's new opposition party?! Despite outraising and outspending all other parties, Britain's conservative Tory party is falling in the polls to P.M. Tony Blair's "New Labour" party. This collapse seems likely to increase; just days after conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch indicated his love of cheap labour, his paper "The Sun" is endorsing Blair. What isn't being pointed out, though, is that the Liberal Democrats are gaining former Labour voters just as fast as Labour is gaining conservative voters. A British public opinion site indicates that 43% of its visitors support LibDem policies, while the Guardian's unofficial "poll-u-like" shows 45% support for the LibDems, even though The Guardian has encouraged its readers to "hold their nose" and vote for Blair. Given that prior election polls in Britain have been off by as much as 19%, could there be a major shift here?
posted by insomnia_lj on Apr 21, 2005 - 32 comments

If the election was to mark the point from which Iraqis would settle their differences through politics and not through violence, it failed; for those responsible for the insurgency— not only those planting suicide bombs but those running the organizations responsible for them and the leaders of the community that has shown itself sympathetic enough to the insurgents' cause to shelter them—did not take part. The political burden of the elections was to bring those who felt frightened or alienated by the new dispensation into the political process, so they could express their opposition through politics and not through violence; the task, that is, was to attract Sunnis to the polls and thereby to isolate the extremists. And in this, partly because of an electoral system that the Sunnis felt, with some reason, was unfairly stacked against them, the election failed.

Iraq: The Real Election. See also Iraq: Without Consensus, Democracy Is Not the Answer. (pdf)
posted by y2karl on Apr 17, 2005 - 35 comments

Drinking with Christopher Hitchens and the Iraqis Blogger Michael J. Totten recounts a night out with several angry Iraqis and one famous polemicist.
posted by Asparagirl on Feb 8, 2005 - 55 comments

Elections on the US model? Now that the voting is done, questions are starting to arise . . . Sunni Moslems in Kirkuk had an exemption from the boycott of the vote. But of 38 designated polling centres in the Hawija district, only 19 actually opened, and the electoral commission had only sent 50,000 ballots to the district, even though more than 100,000 voters were on the rolls. Of course, things like that happen often in places new to voting, like Ohio. But wait, there's more! Kurdish Christians were not able to vote when balloting materials arrived inexplicably late, and Iraq's interim president said a shortage of ballots at some polling places may have kept tens of thousands from voting. There's been a lot of news about suspicious elections all over the world during the last few years. How can we restore our faith in the democratic process?
posted by kyrademon on Feb 3, 2005 - 81 comments

What I Heard about Iraq --from 1992 until today. head-spinning.
posted by amberglow on Feb 1, 2005 - 84 comments

United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in [insert country]'s presidential election despite a [insert terror group] terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from [insert besieged capital city], 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the [insert terror group].

....A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President [insert idiotic Texas Republican]'s policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in [insert besieged country]. The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began in [insert date], to which President [insert idiotic Texas Republican] gave his personal commitment when he met [foreign puppet politician], the chief of state, in Honolulu in February.

Dateline? Sept. 4th, 1967.

Fact-Checked with archived NYT links at Daily KOS.
posted by taumeson on Jan 31, 2005 - 83 comments

"Because We Have a Duty to Build Iraq, I Will Participate in the Elections." MEMRI translates Iraqi election videos (clips here.)
posted by Yelling At Nothing on Jan 22, 2005 - 30 comments

Logistical issues threaten to undermine Iraqi elections. "I just can't see how we can hold these elections," an American consultant working with Iraqi election planners said on the condition of anonymity." I found out about this story, btw, from someone working on the elections in Baghdad. They write: "We've got a leak. Someone, an American, is talking to the press. And ___ is *pissed*. It's a good article, though... er, even though I'm not commenting on it. Or expressing an opinion. But if you've got any interest in these elections, you should read it."
They also cited several of the problems they are having: "Because our meal times are regulated by (KBR), it only allows us about five hours a day . . . with our Iraqi counterparts. Iraqis bolt for home at around 3 PM to avoid being shot in the head or blown up . . . After a mortar attack, car bomb, or any other security related exercise, the US military shuts down the Iraqna mobile phone network . . . We have become the focal point for . . . everything that the Iraqi staff cannot handle . . . which includes getting people (and) equipment into the building, getting water (and) lunch for day laborers, preventing mass resignations due to salary disputes, replacing windows broken by car bombs, removing trash, cleaning toilets, fixing locks, moving (and unpacking) boxes . . . It makes it difficult to get our actual jobs done, although I have forgotten what those are."
posted by insomnia_lj on Dec 13, 2004 - 6 comments

A decision has been made to attack Fallujah after the first Tuesday in November, after the election: The violent political albatross of a secret Iraq with canceled elections.
posted by four panels on Sep 17, 2004 - 76 comments

Buying up Iraq and Moving Targets
sample paragraph from the first article:
Trying to rebuild a country, when you are policing its civilians and fighting an escalating guerilla war, is a daunting task at best but the United States has boxed itself into an impossible position. Having justified its war on Iraq as measure that would bring liberation and Western-style democracy to Iraq, it needs Iraq to conduct elections as a fig-leaf to justify its occupation and allow it to step away from the impossible task of governing what may now have become an ungovernable country. And, the Bush Administration wants the Iraqi elections to be held before the American presidential ones. But, the Iraqi political scene contains several irresolvable contradictions.
sample paragraph from the second article (within)
posted by y2karl on Dec 11, 2003 - 6 comments

Saddam Hussein wins 100% of the vote in a hilarious display of so called democracy
posted by JonnyX on Oct 16, 2002 - 67 comments