Iraq: Manual Recounting of Voting Machines Ends in a Week
The Director of Operations at the Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission announces that the stations that the manual recounting of 140 electronic voting machines will end within a week.
On Wednesday, the Iraqi Independent High Electoral Commission announced that the manual recounting of electronic voting machines will end within a week.
During a press conference in Baghdad, Daoud Salman, director of operations at the Electoral Commission, said that 140 electronic voting machines will be manually recounted.
He also mentioned that the Commission will not count all voting machines and will only deal with machines based on submitted complaints.
The commission announced on Tuesday that 3,100 electronic voting machines had been manually counted, and will be added to the previously announced results.
Last Monday, the Electoral Commission published the names of the winners in the parliamentary elections on its website without referring to the political blocs they represented.
The Iraqi News Agency announced that the Sadr bloc led the results with 73 seats out of 329.
The Progress bloc, led by the dissolved Parliament Speaker Muhammad al-Halbousi, won 38, while the State of Law bloc, led by former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, won 37 seats.
Spokesperson for al-Fatah Alliance, Ahmed Al-Asadi, mentioned that the alliance has evidence that proves it won in the elections.
For his part, Hadi al-Amiri, head of the alliance, stressed that his side will "not accept these fabricated results, whatever the price," adding that they "will defend the votes of our candidates and voters with all strength."
The turnout in the elections reached 41 percent, the lowest since 2005.