Election monitoring networks announced the preliminary report on monitoring the general vote for the Kurdistan Regional Parliament elections in a media conference.

Election monitoring networks announced the preliminary report on monitoring the general vote for the Kurdistan Regional Parliament elections in a media conference attended by more than ten satellite channels. The networks congratulated the Kurdish people for the success of the elections and thanked the parties that contributed to the success of the elections. Thanks were extended to local and international observers, the commission, the media, the federal government and the regional government. It was explained that the monitoring networks monitored with approximately 1,600 local observers and more than 30 mobile teams in addition to an international monitoring team. Some observations were noted by the monitoring networks on the progress of the elections process. These observations and the report are preliminary, including:

1. Uneven implementation of the commission’s procedures due to the lack of experience of some of the commission’s staff in the Kurdistan Region.
2. Continuation of electoral campaigns during the voting process.
3. Delay in opening some polling stations due to equipment malfunctions.
4. Repeated exclusion of observers and agents of political entities.
5. Monitoring cases of breach of the secrecy of the vote due to the use of mobile phones.
6. The presence of individuals and security forces inside the polling stations.
7. Monitoring cases of electoral violence between security forces and the Commission’s staff and between voters and the Commission’s cadres.
8. Depriving some voters of their right to vote due to the failure of the devices to read fingerprints.
9. The presence of approximately 124 complaints by agents of political entities.
10. Monitoring 34 cases of mismatch between electronic results and manual counting and sorting, a large part of which was due to the lack of knowledge of the Commission’s staff of the procedures.

It is worth noting that the Tammuz Organization for Social Development’s network of observers monitors the elections in the Kurdistan Region with more than 200 observers distributed across polling stations and centers. The monitoring is carried out within the framework of the Alliance of National Networks and Organizations to Monitor the Kurdistan Region Parliament Elections, which monitors with more than 1,600 observers, and within the Democracy and Transparency Project “Enabling Civic Participation and Media Freedom “ in partnership with the Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) and with the support of the European Union.

It is worth noting that the monitoring is carried out in a long-term manner, starting from the stage of approving the election law and continuing until the general voting day on October 20^th , monitoring the counting, sorting and auditing, and reaching the final announcement of the election results.

Download the Arabic version of the report Click here

Download the English version of the report Click here

October 21^st , 2024