Workers recount ballots in Kirkuk, some 250 km north of Baghdad, capital of Iraq, on July 3, 2018. The Iraqi electoral commission started partial manual recount in the ethnically mixed province of Kirkuk on Tuesday after complaints of irregularities and fraud in the May 12 parliamentary election. (Xinhua/Raizer Zangana)
BAGHDAD, July 3 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi electoral commission started partial manual recount in the ethnically mixed province of Kirkuk on Tuesday after complaints of irregularities and fraud in the May 12 parliamentary election.
The recount process started in the building of the recount center in central city of Kirkuk, some 250 km north of the capital Baghdad, Layth Jabur Hamza, spokesman of the judicial panel said in a statement.
A panel of nine judges, who replaced the nine members of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), supervised the recount process.
The recount was carried out by a number of IHEC employees from the electoral commission's offices in Baghdad, officials from Kirkuk judiciary offices as well as dozens of local IHEC employees, Hamza said.
Inside the recount center, dozens of ballot boxes distributed on some 130 employees, while representatives of the political blocs were observing the recount process, Xinhua reporter at the scene said.
The media workers were prevented from bringing their cameras and mobile phones, but were allowed to enter the center to observe the recount process.
Iraqi forces intensified security measures, as hundreds of troops and military vehicles deployed in different areas across the city to secure the recount center, the reporter added.
On June 30, the nine judges of the electoral commission decided that the recount of votes of suspect polling centers start in Kirkuk Province and then extend to the other provinces of Sulaimaniyah, Erbil, Dohuk, Nineveh, Salahudin and Anbar, according to the commission.
The commission also decided that the manual recount of the overseas votes in countries including Iran, Turkey, Britain, Lebanon, Jordan, the United States and Germany, will start when the ballot boxes are transferred to Baghdad.
On June 24, the judicial panel decided that the manual recount for the May 12 parliamentary election over irregularities and fraud will only apply to suspect polling centers mentioned by official reports and complaints.
It is not yet clear to what extent the recount of votes will change the final results of the election, but it would certainly delay the formation of the next government.
On May 12, millions of Iraqis went to 8,959 polling centers across the country to vote for their parliamentary representatives in the first general election after Iraq's historic victory over the Islamic State militant group last December.
