Iraqi Election Judges Reject Fraud Claims

Iraqi election judges rejected fraud claims made by Sunni Arabs. The UIA, the Shi'ite list, won 59% of the vote in Baghdad according to early returns, and the Sunnis find that result to be preposterous.  Sunnis, especially Adnan Al-Dulaimi of the National Concord Front, demanded a revote in Baghdad because of the fraud. But the Iraqi Electoral Commission rejected that request outright.

What follows will be critical for the political situation in Iraq. The key question for an Iraqi democracy is not whether all the people would vote, but whether the losers in such an election would accept the legitimacy of the election. Accusations of fraud are common in all democracies, including our own. Often they have merit, and often they do not. But when accusations of fraud mask a political reality of marginalization then they are often the pretext for rejection of the democratic process outright. In other words, the Sunnis crying fraud are not doing so because of some shady election computer system or ballot box stuffing scheme, but because they cannot believe that they comprise so small a population of the electorate in Baghdad.  It would be like a Republican crying fraud for losing an election in my Congressional district (IL-9, extremely Democratic, Jan Schakowsky) or a Democratic no-name crying fraud for losing a Congressional race in western Kansas. It is completely divorced from reality.

The next step in Iraq will be for the UIA to find a willing partner to form the new Presidential Council. Will they go the same route as before and link up with the Kurds, thereby confirming Sunni marginalization in the new Iraq and encouraging the insurgency? Or will they join up with Sunni religious elements in a national unity government with a common platform that demands US troops withdraw from the country? Or will there be some other path? First, however, the Sunni Arabs must accept the fact that they do not comprise more than 20% of Iraq's population. Sadly, it may take years of war before they realize it.