Reply #9: from LA Times article... [View All]

[realFedUp]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-usiraq26jan26,1,6062961.story

Few Iraqis to Vote Abroad

About 10% of eligible voters in the U.S. and under 25% worldwide register. Mixed feelings on the election and a lack of sites are blamed.

By Paul Richter
Times Staff Writer

January 26, 2005

WASHINGTON — Efforts to register Iraqi expatriates to vote in Sunday's elections have fallen far short of expectations, drawing fewer than 10% of the eligible voters in the United States and fewer than 25% worldwide, officials said Tuesday.

The program was launched two months ago by the Iraqi election commission — which is dominated by exiles — in hopes of giving a voice to Iraqis driven abroad by Saddam Hussein and of beefing up vote totals for the moderate Iraqi political parties led by exiles.
But as registration closed Tuesday, it became clear that the $92-million effort had been hampered by a late start, the long distances between registration sites and many expatriates' mixed feelings about the election.

Sam Kubba, an Iraqi American businessman in northern Virginia who lobbied hard to win expatriate votes, said he had been sorely disappointed in the result. "It was a long distance to travel … and the elections had lost credibility with some people," Kubba said.
A senior U.S. official said the low turnout meant expatriate voters would not be a major factor in the election, adding that the relatively low turnout in the United States was "not all that surprising."

"People have a way of settling in the United States and forgetting about the old country," he said. A tally that included all but the last day of registration showed that about 24,000 of an estimated 240,000 eligible Iraqi Americans signed up over the nine-day registration period, and about 256,000 out of an estimated 1.2 million eligible Iraqi expatriates worldwide. The figures suggest expatriate voters will be less influential than some analysts had forecast.

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