{"id":97,"date":"2005-01-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-01-07T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-10-01T20:26:49","modified_gmt":"2010-10-01T20:26:49","slug":"program-scrambles-to-prepare-overseas-iraqis-for-upcoming-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/program-scrambles-to-prepare-overseas-iraqis-for-upcoming-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Program Scrambles to Prepare Overseas Iraqis for Upcoming Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><BR><br \/>\n<P dir=rtl style=\"DIRECTION: rtl; LINE-HEIGHT: 13pt; unicode-bidi: embed; TEXT-ALIGN: left; mso-line-height-rule: exactly\"><br \/>\n<span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: Arial; color: #4900D2\"><br \/>\nVOA &#8211; Aina<br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: Arial\"><br \/>\n    An estimated one million Iraqis living outside Iraq are<br \/>\n    expected to take part in the country&#8217;s elections for a transitional national<br \/>\n    assembly at the end of this month. <\/p>\n<p>    The International Organization for Migration&#8217;s Iraq<br \/>\n    Out-of-Country Voting Program is working to inform and register Iraqi<br \/>\n    expatriates who are eligible to vote. <br \/>\n    From Amman, Jordan, the program&#8217;s spokeswoman Monique De Groot said<br \/>\n    potential voters must be at least 18-years-old, prove their identity and<br \/>\n    show evidence of their Iraqi nationality. <\/p>\n<p>Iraqis must be able to prove their eligibility with at least two<br \/>\n    documents that have been issued by a state, or a state agency or an<br \/>\n    international institution,&quot; she explained. &quot;Such documents could be a<br \/>\n    passport, a marriage certificate, a military document, or a driver&#8217;s<br \/>\n    license.<\/p>\n<p>She added that security is a legitimate concern at polling stations<br \/>\n    outside the country, as well.<br \/>\n    <br \/>\n    I&#8217;m not saying that we do expect security problems, but security is an<br \/>\n    obvious issue that we have to take into account very seriously, with<br \/>\n    implementation of the operation,&quot; she added. &quot;So, we do work very closely<br \/>\n    together with the host government on the issue and their particular<br \/>\n    department within the government, to take care of public security.<\/p>\n<p>Iraqis overseas must register in person, at polling stations in cities in<br \/>\n    14 different countries. These countries are Australia, Britain, Canada,<br \/>\n    Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Jordan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Syria,<br \/>\n    Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. <\/p>\n<p>Registration lasts a week, from January 17 to January 23. After that,<br \/>\n    registered voters overseas must return to the polling station to cast their<br \/>\n    ballots from January 28-30. <br \/>\n    Mohamad Hanon, an Iraqi adviser to the program in the United States, says<br \/>\n    he thinks his fellow Iraqis are, in his words, &quot;excited and eager&quot; to<br \/>\n    participate. <\/p>\n<p>For them, it&#8217;s historical and it&#8217;s the very first time for them to<br \/>\n    exercise their democratic right to decide who is going to run the country,&quot;<br \/>\n    he noted. <br \/>\n    Mr. Hanon says he does not know whether most members of the Iraqi<br \/>\n    community in the United States are Arabs or Kurds, Christians or Muslims,<br \/>\n    Sunnis or Shias. But he says he believes the overseas bloc will be an<br \/>\n    important voice in the overall results. <\/p>\n<p>Over the course of years, during the Baathist regime, during Saddam&#8217;s<br \/>\n    period, iraqis have fled, a large number of Iraqis fled the country,&quot; he<br \/>\n    said. &quot;The numbers are said to be somewhere between three and five million<br \/>\n    expats. So, given that number and given how many people are going to vote, I<br \/>\n    would say there will be a significant influence or impact on the election,<br \/>\n    itself.&quot; <\/p>\n<p>In the United States, polling sites will be set up in five cities &#8212;<br \/>\n    Chicago, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan; Los Angeles, California; Nashville,<br \/>\n    Tennesee; and Washington, DC. <br \/>\n    One potential voter is Sarhad Jammo, the Iraqi-American bishop of a<br \/>\n    Catholic Chaldean church in San Diego, California. <\/p>\n<p>Bishop Jammo says there are 30,000 ethnic Iraqis living in the San<br \/>\n    Diego-area, all of whom want to exercise their rights to participate in the<br \/>\n    democratic process to build a new Iraq. He adds, though, that many of them<br \/>\n    believe it is not fair that the nearest polling station to his city is three<br \/>\n    hours away by car. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;And that will create in the heart of the people a feeling of frustration<br \/>\n    and of, just, protest, and maybe boycotting it [the election] because they<br \/>\n    say that&#8217;s what they [the organizers] want,&quot; he said. &quot;They want to bar us<br \/>\n    from going to polls.&quot; <br \/>\n    The U.S. spokesman for the Iraq Out-of-Country Voting Program, Jeremy<br \/>\n    Copeland, says the U.S. cities were chosen based on concentration of the<br \/>\n    local Iraqi community there. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;We think about one-third of Iraqis, just over one-third, actually, are<br \/>\n    around Detroit and places like Southfield and Dearborn [Michigan],&quot; he<br \/>\n    explained. &quot;We&#8217;re looking at probably about 125,000 Iraqis there. Also, a<br \/>\n    large population in Chicago. There&#8217;s a significant population in Nashville,<br \/>\n    Kurdish, in particular. Also a large population in San Francisco, Los<br \/>\n    Angeles and San Diego, as well as [Washington,] DC. And, then, there are<br \/>\n    pockets all over the place &#8212; New York, Washington state, Texas, Arizona,<br \/>\n    Nebraska.&quot; <\/p>\n<p>Mr. Copeland said Iraqis often raise questions about the voting center<br \/>\n    locations at town hall meetings that have been held in the five U.S. cities.<br \/>\n    But he added that potential voters also want to know more about the<br \/>\n    elections themselves, and the more than 100 political groups that are slated<br \/>\n    to run. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><BR><br \/>\n<P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left\" align=left><br \/>\n<span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 8pt; font-family: Arial; color: black\"><br \/>\n7-1-2005 <\/SPAN><BR><br \/>\n<SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 11pt; COLOR: #4900dc; FONT-FAMILY: 'Estrangelo Edessa'\">&#1826;&#1815;&#1834;&#1821;&#1808; <\/SPAN><\/P><br \/>\n<BR><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VOA &#8211; Aina An estimated one million Iraqis living outside Iraq are expected to take part in the country&#8217;s elections for a transitional national assembly at the end of this month. The International Organization for Migration&#8217;s Iraq Out-of-Country Voting Program is working to inform and register Iraqi expatriates who are eligible to vote. From Amman, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","","category-assyrian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}