Sunday, January 30, 2005

Voting in Iraq



This is not a proper analysis of the Iraqi elections or whether anybody voted today or what the insurgents have accomplished in blood and suffering. That must wait until later. For now, my feminist side is ascendant and immediately noticed this interesting aspect of Iraqi democracy in action:


Al-Yawer was among the first to cast his ballot, voting alongside his wife at election headquarters in the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad. As poll workers watched, he marked two ballots and dropped them into boxes, and then walked away with an Iraqi flag given to him by a poll worker.

''I'm very proud and happy this morning,'' al-Yawer told reporters. ''I congratulate all the Iraqi people and call them to vote for Iraq.''

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A Postscript: The link I give above now leads you to a different article than the one from which I took the quote. However, if you put my quote into Google and Google the news you get the link I gave you. Does this mean that the article was changed? I don't know. I was unable to find another link to the original article, though the second paragraph of the above quote was also used here.

A Second Postscript: Jay Sundahl in the comments points out that I may have misread this piece. There are two ballots, so Mr. al-Yawer may have been just filling his own two ballots. If so, I'm very glad. It's very good sometimes to be mistaken, if the reality is better than what one thought.