IHEC: 98% voter turnout in special voting for Kurdistan parliament elections
Shafaq News/On Friday, the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) announced that theoverall voter turnout for the special voting in the Kurdistan Region'sparliamentary elections reached 98%.
In a pressconference, Aisar Yassin, the official spokesperson for the KurdistanParliament elections, stated, "The voter turnout in Duhok was 98%, inErbil 97%, in Al-Sulaymaniyah 97%, and in Halabja 96%."
Yassin alsoprovided figures for voter participation in other provinces, reporting 43% inNineveh, 56% in Kirkuk, 62% in Diyala, 8% in Al-Anbar, 79% in Baghdad Karkh, 4%in Wasit, 54% in Saladin, and 60% in Baghdad Al-Rusafa.
The specialvoting day, held exclusively for Peshmerga forces and internal securitypersonnel, began at 7 a.m. with 165 polling centers open across the KurdistanRegion and ended at 6:00 p.m.
By noon,turnout figures showed 77% participation in Duhok, 67% in Al-Sulaymaniyah, and64% in Halabja. The last estimated percentage of participation in Kirkukreached 50% by 3:30 p.m.
Earliertoday, Judge Omar Ahmed Mohammed, the head of the Board of Commissioners ofIraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), described the votingprocess for the Kurdistan Parliament’s sixth term as "smooth andorderly."
A total of1,091 candidates, including men and women, are competing for 100 seats in theregional parliament, five of which are reserved for minority communities aspart of a quota system.
According tothe election law, at least 30 seats must be allocated to women.
TheKurdistan Region has 2,899,578 registered voters, of whom 215,960 were eligibleto participate in the special vote. The remaining 2,683,618 voters will casttheir ballots in the general election scheduled for Sunday.
