What was the voter turn-out in Iraq? Common Consensus seems to have settled on 57 percent, but as I've been suggesting, critics have plausible grounds to lower the count below 50 percent. The Daily Kos, exuding more sour grapes than a Tuscan winery, is guiding his readers toward this argument. Yesterday, he linked to a piece on the Editor & Publisher website by Greg Mitchell, which addresses this issue. First, Mitchell notes that in his initial statements, Farid Ayar, spokesman for the Independent Electoral Commission for Iraq claimed "as many as eight million," which the media (says Mitchell) "quickly translated as 'about eight million,' and then, inevitably, 'eight million.'"
Out of how many voters? Well, the press has settled on 14 million. But as Howard Kurtz has noted,
the 14 million figure is the number of registered Iraqis, while turnout is usually calculated using the number of eligible voters. The number of adults in Iraq is probably closer to 18 million.
At 18 million, then, voter turn-out is around 45 percent. Not bad, given the campaign of intimidation and coercion unleashed by the anti-Iraqi fascists. But not the emotionally satisfying "over-50 percent" mark.
"Election officials concede they did not have a reliable baselines on which to calculate turnout," Kurtz asserted. Then, in an addition that must have warmed Zuniga's heart, Kurtz/Mitchell quoted Democratic strategist Robert Weiner:
It's an amazing media error, a huge blinder. I'm sure the Bush administration is thrilled by this spin.
Alright. Possibly 8 million voters out of maybe 18 million who were eligible. But wait. Where do get the figure of 18 million? Kurtz admitted he took the number based on some "approximations" by experts. On the other hand, writing in the New York Sun, Iraqi ex-pat Nibras Kazimi quotes an Iraqi man who believes that the turn-out was actually 80 percent. Why?
[T]he estimated number of voters is based on the food-ration system. He avows that the numbers of food-ration cards are phony baloney. The system was rife with forgery in the 1990s and there are as many as 1.5 million fake names on these cards. During the sanctions era, many families understandably bribed the officials in charge of food dispensation in order to get more monthly provisions to sell on the black-market and purchase other foods not provided by the state.
In other words, there are less than 18 million--or maybe 14 million--eligible voters in Iraq, which, of course, would raise the turn-out totals.
My own feelings? With all due respect to Mr. Kazimi, what worries me about the media coverage of the election was what it didn't show. No, I don't mean the Sunnis. I mean the millions of Iraqis who live in rural no-name villages, often no more than a collection of a few desolate hovels. The vast majority of these people are illiterate and live under the thumb of some tribal sheik; moreover, they do not dwell near the cities (and the hotels) where media types gather. Where were these people? Did they vote? Where? And are they counted on ration cards or any other means of measuring the Iraqi population? One of the failings of reportage from Iraq (including mine, I'm afraid) has been the inability to penetrate into the deeper levels of the country's rural life. I fear election coverage may have been no different.
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