And on Thursday, the Electoral Commission announced the end of the counting and manual counting in the stations whose results were challenged, in the province of Babil, noting that the results were identical to the electronic one by 100 percent.
The director of the Babel office, Kifah Khudari Al-Amri, said: “The results of the manual counting and sorting matched the results of the electronic counting and sorting for the contested electoral stations for the four electoral districts in the province by 100 percent.”
He added that “the number of the contested stations amounted to 170, which were considered in accordance with the technical procedures, the availability of evidence and the recommendation of the Board of Commissioners, where the opening of the stations and the hall of honor in the building of the Unknown Soldier was initiated.”
He pointed out that “the percentage of congruence reached 100 percent for all stations, without any difference in the announced preliminary results.”
Objections without evidence
This is the third time that the results of manual counting and sorting coincide with the electronic one, after the 140 boxes, which the Commission manually recalculated, due to a defect in communicating its results electronically, as well as the first time that the Commission conducted the counting and sorting of some stations, manually as part of its procedures. To confirm transparency.
Observers of the electoral affairs saw that the consistency of the results each time confirms the validity of the previous results announced by the Commission, in an electronic form, especially since the province of Babil represents one of the stations that the armed groups rely on in their objections, due to the loss of a number of seats in it.
In turn, an informed source in the Electoral Commission said that “the counting and sorting operations are in full swing for the stations that the Board of Commissioners decided to return electronically, but so far there has been no change in the results, because of these appeals, despite the counting and sorting of appeals related to the province of Babil, In addition to the manual counting and sorting that was conducted previously, for dozens of stations.”
The source, who declined to be named, added to “Sky News Arabia” that “those who objected to the results did not present strong evidence of fraud or manipulation, but rather that the candidates did not believe the number of votes they obtained, but most of them objected without legal evidence, or confirm a fraud.
The source pointed out that “the commission received only two appeals from the red category, which is related to forgery, and they were resolved, in Salah al-Din Governorate.”
Al-Fateh Alliance refuses
The commission received 1,277 appeals against the election results, of which it accepted 46, and recommended that 1,231 be returned, while the commission decided to manually re-sort the results of 800 stations distributed over Basra, Baghdad, Muthanna, Dhi Qar, Erbil and Salah al-Din, according to official data.
The Al-Fateh Alliance, which is the political umbrella for the armed factions, refused to accept that the results matched by 100%, while it was considered that this did not meet the aspirations of the protesters (supporters of armed groups).
Alliance MP Mukhtar al-Moussawi said, in a statement, that “the results of the appeals match by 100% increase the suspicions of fraud in the elections.”
Al-Moussawi added that “the matching results of the appeals expose the conspiracy that was hatched against the Iraqi people by stealing their votes.”
He pointed out that “manual counting and sorting does not meet the demands of the popular protests that reject the results,” stressing that “even with going to comprehensive manual counting and sorting, nothing will change.”
Close associates and followers of these groups also expressed their rejection of the results of the manual counting and sorting, threatening to escalate the protests near the Green Zone.
And political analyst, Wael Al-Shammari, believes that “consistency in the results is inevitable, due to the commission’s reliance on technical and electronic processes in managing the electoral process, which reduces the chances of error.”
Al-Shammari said in a comment to “Sky News Arabia” that “the noise of the objections is heading to an end, so that everyone accepts the current results, which means moving to the stage of negotiations to form the government.”
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