What makes this easy is that IHEC's website was terrible beforehand. It looked good in terms of technical design, but in doing research before the election we found it to be useless. Information of outdated and limited in terms of precise info on candidates by district.
This is state TV al-Iraqiya's live feed of information dripping out from IHEC.
Regarding last night's discussion on Sadrist results, in the last couple of hours they are projecting 75-90 seats. If that is correct, the weeks to come will be focused on preventing Sadrist domination to the exclusion of other considerations.
I thought there might be some symbolism in this. IHEC's website lacked useful info on the election, but it appeared to have been taken over by a Crypto Trader Bot. Maybe it can take advantage of the likely reversal of Kathimi's dinar devaluation.
If I have any followers who work for the UN or NGOs who worked to help IHEC with its website or election results presentation, I just wanted to make sure that you knew that you wasted your time and money.
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So #Iraq had parliamentary elections today. We await results which are expected w/n 24 hours.
The one result which can be announced is that participation was low. Precise % not released yet, but talk from Iraqi journos is that optimistically they hope it will exceed 40%.
The other observation from multiple sources - some others here on twitter have also noticed this - is that participation from the youth was very low. Participation from older Iraqis appears to have been respectable.
From studying the district candidacies & from what is coming out of multiple Arab TV channels on how it, if there are any big wins they will likely be the Sadrists in Baghdad & the south & Speaker Muhammad al-Halbusi in the Sunni-majority provinces. Specific reasons:
Regarding events in Iraq today: first, this is the text of Abd al-Mahdi's "resignation" statement. I would encourage media to be careful about using the word "resignation" to the extent that implies AAM has left or will imminently leave office. pmo.iq/press2019/29-1…
My take is that this is the end of the beginning of this crisis, not the beginning of the end. AAM simply says "I will submit my formal resignation" to parliament, after noting that he said he was ready to resign last month. There is no clear rule parl't has to accept it.
Notably, AAM's statement contains a lengthy quote from the religious authorities' statement from Karbala today. This is the video of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani rep Ahmad al-Safi: