Weekly Statement
• The Board of Commissioners (BoC) holds successive regular and special meetings.
• Setting the 1st of November to be the start of electoral campaigns for the electoral race.
• More than (200,000) polling employees will work on polling day.
• More than 16 million voters were entitled to participate in the upcoming local elections.
Weekly Statement
The Board of Commissioners (BoC) of the Independent High Electoral Commission in Iraq (IHEC) held successive regular and special sessions throughout the week from the 22nd to 26th October 2023, in which the (BoC) approved the exclusion of candidates or re-nominating them, according to the verification of results or approving submitted appeals, in addition to ratifying the names of candidates who substituted those excluded.
With the end of the stage of accrediting and verifying the eligibility of the candidates, the Board of Commissioners set the 1st November 2023 as the date of starting media campaigns for the candidates on the condition that it should stop 24 hours before the special voting event which will take place on the 16th December 2023. Central and sub-committees were formed to work in coordination with Baghdad Municipality and the municipal directorates and departments, to monitor the media campaigns of the candidates, and monitor violations of electoral propaganda places, as well as coordination with the Media and Communications Commission regarding violations of the audio-visual media, in addition to committees that follow up on publishing on social media sites.
In a related matter, the Election Commission issued instructions setting the ceiling for spending on electoral campaigns for party and coalition candidates and individual candidates. It was decided that the maximum ceiling for a candidate’s electoral spending would be a variable amount of (250) dinars multiplied by the number of voters in the constituency for which he is nominated for. And the electoral expenditure limits for the party and political alliance is the same amount which was allocated to the candidate, multiplied by the number of candidates for the party or alliance’s list in the constituency.
The Independent High Electoral Commission is working on adopting administrative procedures to contract with polling employees for conducting the upcoming governorate council elections. The number of (206,429) employees were selected according to the electronic lottery that took place on the 22nd October, as applicants were selected from (668,916) applicants, who were approved for meeting the conditions of application and its disciplines. They will be trained then within the third hierarchical training level of IHEC.
In preparation for the next stage and to ensure the accuracy of the procedures adopted in manufacturing kits and sensitive and non-sensitive materials and their compliance with the required technical conditions; the Board of Commissioners directly with the support of specialized technical committees, supervises the printing of voters’ cards who registered their data biometrically since March 20th 2022 until the end of the updating phase on August 20th 2023.Number of cards that will be printed were (1,977,369) biometric cards for voters of public and special voting.
In addition to supervising the printing of (17,677,150) ballot papers, including ballot papers used in public and special voting.as well as following up the preparation of (111,714) surveillance cameras, as well as providing the inks and voting kits.
In a related context, the governorate electoral offices (GEOs) are working on field follow-up on registration centers to determine the actual reality of work inside them, meet work requirements, see the process of distributing the voters’ cards, following up on the warehouses, and to see the extent to which preventive safety measures were followed in order to preserve the electoral infrastructure and equipment.
The IHEC has come a long way from the timetable for the upcoming governorates’ council elections, the features of which have become clear through the number of voters who are eligible to participate in the local elections, who became (16,158,788) voters, including (15,108,135) voters for the public voting, distributed among (7,166) polling centers, (35,553) polling stations. And (1,002,393) voters for special voting who will vote in 565 polling centers, and 2,367 polling stations. while the number of displaced voters was (48,260) IDPs, for that IHEC will open (35) polling centers and (120) polling stations. Thus, the commission has entered the countdown stage reaching polling day.
Therefore, the Commission invites all stakeholders, including media professionals, civil society organizations, parties and coalitions that will participate in the elections, to unify their efforts in expanding the process of the electoral education and awareness for the importance of participating in elections, in order to achieve successful electoral process that will take place on 18th December 2023.