UPDATE: AP REPORTING: The names of each province is followed by its capital in parentheses. No information was available from Baghdad province; the southern province of Babil; the northern Kurdish provinces of Dahuk, Suleimaniyah and Irbil; and the central province of Salahuddin.
In some cases, elections officials gave only rounded figures.
West-Central Iraq:
ANBAR (Ramadi):
Figures only from the area of the city of Fallujah. Turnout in other parts of Anbar province believed to be minimal, and results not known.
_ Yes: 3 percent.
_ No: 97 percent.
_ Votes counted: All 100,000 votes from Fallujah counted. (Turnout of 77 percent in Fallujah. )
DIYALA (Baqouba)
_ Yes: 280,000 (70 percent)
_ No: 80,000 (20 percent)
_ Disqualified votes: 40,000 (10 percent)
_ Votes counted: All 400,000 votes counted. (57 percent turnout)
NINEVAH (Mosul)
_ Yes: 326,774, (78 percent)
_ No: 90,065, (21 percent)
_ Disqualified votes: 2,965 (less than 1 percent)
_ Votes counted: 419,804 votes, from 475 of the 500 polling stations counted so far. (Turnout percentage unknown.)
TAMIM (Kirkuk)
_ Yes: 341,611 (63 percent)
_ No: 195,725 (36 percent)
_ Disqualified votes: 5,420 (1 percent)
_ Votes counted: All 542,000 votes counted. (78 percent turnout).
Southern Iraq:
BASRA (Basra)
_ Yes: 640,200. (97 percent)
_ No: 19,800. (3 percent)
_ Votes counted: All 660,000 votes counted. (64 percent turnout).
DHI QAR (Nasiriyah)
_ Yes: 415,000 (90 percent)
_ No: 46,000 (10 percent)
_ All 461,000 votes counted. (54 percent turnout)
KARBALA (Karbala)
_ Yes: 417,715 (95 percent).
_ No: 21,985 (5 percent).
_ Votes counted: All 439,700 votes counted. (60 percent turnout.)
WASIT (Kut)
_ Yes: 494,950. (95 percent)
_ No: 26,050. (5 percent)
_ All 521,000 votes counted.(54 percent turnout).
Four southern provinces where only the turnout was known, as reported by Carina Perelli, the U.N. elections chief:
NAJAF (Najaf): 56 percent.
MUTHANNA (Samawah): 58 percent turnout
MAYSAN (Amarah): 57 percent turnout
QADISIYAH Diwaniyah): 56 percent turnout.
UPDATE: Citing AFP and Reuters, this report appears in The Daily Star:
The Sunni Arab dominated province of Salaheddin has voted by 71 percent against Iraq’s draft constitution according to preliminary results reported Sunday by the chief provincial election officer.“Seventy-one percent of voters in Salaheddin province voted ‘no’ to the Iraqi constitution,” Saleh Khalil Farraj told AFP.
“These are the initial results, they are not final. They must be fine-tuned and we will announce the official figure at 5:00 pm (1400 GMT),” he said.
Eighty-eight percent of all registered voters in Salaheddin had cast ballots, the official added.
In the city of Samarra, 95 percent of voters rejected the draft charter for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, while three percent approved.
Results from all four Sunni-dominated provinces, Diyala, Salaheddin, Al-Anbar and Nineveh, are crucial because the constitution would be rejected if two-thirds of Iraqis vote ‘no’ in at least three of the country’s 18 provinces.
Chris Albritton has a post up about the Iraqi referendum, which begins, “BAGHDAD — Well, well… The Sunnis might surprise us all on this one.”
The absolute worst-case scenario is if the Sunnis come close to defeating the constitution, but fail. There will be accusations of vote-rigging and any political momentum the Sunnis felt was moving their way will be spent. The Shi’ites will have consolidated their power and those Sunnis on the fence might be moved into active opposition. The insurgency might even worsen, if such things are possible, or a close vote might be the trigger for open civil war.“Mushroom Cloud” Rice , who should know as she is in Europe today, is saying the constitution “appears” to have passed. “There’s a belief that it has probably passed,” Rice told reporters. The same Washington Post article says,So, it will definitely be interesting to watch the results come in. So far, we’re hearing nothing but rumors. They range from the intriguing — I heard that the polling stations in the Green Zone, the seat the Iraqi Government, went overwhelmingly against the constitution; make of that what you will — to the absurd: Al-Firat, an Iranian channel, is reporting that instead of voting “no,” Salahadin province, containing Tikrit, voted 75 percent in favor of the constitution. If that result turns out to be true, there will be no doubt the vote was fixed, and in a stupidly clumsy manner.
I do think that defeating the constitution might be best in the long run. It will embolden the Sunnis and give them a political win, motivating them to further involve themselves in the political process. This will force the Shi’ites and Kurds to deal with real elected representatives instead of appointed ones. Will this spell and end to violence? Of course not, but anything that allows the Sunnis to claim victory instead of forcing them to eat political table scraps is a big step in ending the Sunni-led insurgency.
News services from Baghdad reported Sunday that early returns suggested large numbers of voters rejected the constitution in the Sunni strongholds of Anbar and Salahuddin provinces. But according to initial results, Sunni voters may not have been able to reach the two-thirds threshold in Diyala province east of Baghdad or in Nineveh province in the north, where Sunnis also have large representation.America’s top diplomat praised Iraqi police and security forces who deserved “a lot of credit” for the peaceful voting day, which will probably confuse the families of the five US soldiers killed in Ramadi yesterday.
Today in Iraq has a survey of all the media coverage thus far.