Voting machines are being undersupplied in heavily Sunni provinces, according to Reuters. Well actually it's not the machines themselves,
it's the polling centers that contain them that are missing. An absense of ballots (called "voting sheets") is mentioned, too.
Voters said to
hunt for polling sites in west Iraq
RAMADI, Iraq (Reuters) - Hours before a crucial referendum on a new constitution, voters in western Iraq, where many are expected to say "No," were asking themselves a troubling question: where are the polling stations?
"There are no voting centers in cities like Haditha, Hit, Rawa, Qaim, Ana, Baghdadi and the villages around them," Mahmoud Salman al-Ani, a human rights activist in Ramadi, said on Friday, listing locations across western Anbar province.
"There aren't actually any voting centers or even voting sheets in these cities ..."
Here, we do it differently. We re-district, so voters' old polling places no longer have their registered records.
In Iraq, it's not so subtle.
Oh, and we've bombed out bridges for mobility too -->
[ The Reuters link is
here. ]
US forces recently bombed 8 of 12 Euphrates River bridges between the western (Syrian) border and Ramadi (in central Iraq), according to a US Major General. We've occupied the other four. See the map of the Euphrates below.
"We took out portions of these bridges to deny terrorists, foreign fighters and insurgents the capability to cross north to south or south to north across the Euphrates River." - announcement by Major General Rick Lynch in news conference last week.
Since fas's diary on the missing polling places has slipped into oblivion, I'm waving the flag now. The credit goes to fas for finding this! And Rp diaried the bridges story last week, and he wondered if the bombing between the border and Ramadi in central Iraq could be well timed to limit the mobility of voters hostile to the proposed Constitution.
Now I'm not trying to be cynical here. We had the Franklin County elections board for our November election. And no one had to bomb any bridges.