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Iraq's Voters Cast Ballots Under Intense Security (Sudarsan Raghavan, 2/01/09, Washington Post)

Millions of Iraqis voted peacefully Saturday in elections widely seen as a key test of Iraq's stability and foreshadowing the struggles for power and patronage that will shape the country as the U.S. role here diminishes.

The elections, the country's first in four years, were remarkable for the absence of serious attacks, highlighting security gains in the past year. [...]

Still, thousands of women, including many in conservative tribal areas, cast ballots, many for the first time. Voters brought their families to participate in only the second elections since the fall of President Saddam Hussein and by far the most open and competitive. More than 14,000 candidates contested for 440 seats to lead influential local councils, the equivalent of state legislatures in the United States.

"I am so happy," Raad al-Shimari, 30, declared in the Kadhamiyah neighborhood of Baghdad, flashing a forefinger stained with purple ink indicating he had just voted. "I chose the person that will represent me."

After the polls closed Saturday evening, U.N. and Iraqi officials declared the elections -- one of the most heavily monitored by independent observers in recent Middle Eastern history -- as transparent and credible. "This is a good day for Iraq's democracy," said Staffan de Mistura, the top U.N. official in Iraq.

Under Tight Security, Elections Are Calm in Iraq (STEPHEN FARRELL, 2/01/09, NY Times)

“I just voted, and I’m very happy,” Mukhalad Waleed, 35, said in the city of Ramadi, in Anbar. “We could not do the same thing the last time because of the insurgency.”

Part way through the day, the government lifted the vehicle ban in some areas to allow voters to travel to polling stations farther afield. It also extended the voting period by an hour, until 6 p.m.

Results are not expected for several days, with politicians anxiously waiting to find out how many councils will change hands, and if widespread dissatisfaction voiced against religious parties will translate into fewer seats for them.

More than 14,000 candidates are competing for 440 seats in 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces. The seats are for provincial councils that control municipal budgets and have the power to hire and fire people, giving successful candidates a great deal of power and influence in a nation with high unemployment. There was no voting in the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north, or in the divided city of Kirkuk.

In Qahtaniya, a village southwest of Sinjar in Nineveh Province that was the site in 2007 of the single worst truck bombing during the war, with as many as 500 people killed, the voting was orderly and even cheerful. Khodar Khudaida Rashu, the administrator of the Qahtaniya subdistrict, predicted that turnout would exceed 90 percent in most places.

The voting was the largest electoral exercise to be held since the wave of violence peaked in 2006 to 2007, and conditions were considerably more peaceful this time.

As Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki voted in Baghdad’s Green Zone, now under Iraqi control but still heavily fortified, he said: “I am very happy today because all the indications and information indicate a big turnout in the voting centers. This is a victory for all Iraqis.”

Surge in voting by Iraqi Sunnis (BBC, 2/01/09)

Turnout in Saturday's provincial elections in Iraq was 51%, according to figures from the electoral commission.

This was lower than some had predicted, but Iraqi officials told news agencies turnout had jumped in some mainly Sunni areas which previously boycotted polls.

US President Barack Obama hailed the largely peaceful vote, which he called "an important step forward".

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 1, 2009 8:50 AM