Voting in Iraq

Matthew Hoy
By Matthew Hoy on October 7, 2004

Following the news media creed that no good news may come out of Iraq, Nancy A. Youssef reports that a survey of Iraqis shows that some aren't interested in voting.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi voters are losing interest in elections scheduled for January, and not because they're worried about security.

Instead, potential voters said they had no interest in or understanding of the process, according to a poll by the Iraq Center for Research & Strategic Studies.

The poll, conducted Sept. 15 to 22, surveyed 3,500 people nationwide. Of those, 66.8 percent said they very likely would vote in January's elections for a National Assembly; in June, 88.8 percent had said they very likely would vote.

Just over 8 percent said they might not or definitely wouldn't vote.

Only 12.7 percent of those saying they probably wouldn't vote cited security concerns. A lack of information was cited by 37.3 percent; 35.7 said they had no interest. The margin of error was 3.4 percentage points.

Voter apathy -- sign of a successful democracy. Seriously, the survey has 66.8 percent of people saying they plan on voting in the upcoming elections. If we had that level of turnout in America next month the chattering classes would have a collective apoplexy. The last time voter turnout in a U.S. presidential election topped 60 percent was 1968.

The individuals on the left who will decry this development as a "failure" of the U.S. to "plan" for the postwar reconstruction are the same ones who wanted to do nothing to make this happen in the first place. Saddam getting 100 percent of the vote -- now that was democracy.

Tags

[custom-twitter-feeds headertext="Hoystory On Twitter"]

Calendar

October 2004
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Archives

Categories

pencil linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram