The polls opened this morning in the Washington area and across the globe for overseas Iraqis casting absentee ballots in their country's election to choose a national assembly.
The voting place at the Ramada Inn in New Carrollton, which opened at 7 a.m., is one of five in the United States open in advance of the election in Iraq Sunday.
About 26,000 Iraqi Americans are registered to vote in the three-day election period that ends Sunday, when people in Iraq will cast ballots. About 2,000 signed up at the D.C. polling site.
(Andrea Bruce Woodall -- The Washington Post)
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Video: Joy and applause marked the start of U.S. voting Friday among Iraqi expatriates choosing a new government for their homeland.
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Deciding Iraq's Future: Iraqi Americans will cast absentee ballots in five U.S. metropolitan areas, including Washington, for an election half a world away.
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Voting also got underway today under heavy security in London, Damascus, Sydney, Tehran and other parts of the world where significant numbers of expatriate Iraqis reside.
By some estimates, some 280,000 Iraqis in 14 countries may take part, with Sweden having the largest number, about 31,000. Nearly 26,000 Iraqi Americans have registered to vote in the United States in a three-day election period ending Sunday, when people in Iraq will cast their ballots amid much less secure conditions.
Just more than 2,000 signed up at the Washington area polling site.
The election has been topic one among Iraqis in the Washington area. At candidate nights and in late-night telephone calls, they have debated the various options -- including whether to vote at all. Despite their differences over political parties, though, many Iraqis agree that this election is a novelty.
"To talk politics openly, this is something new," said painter Leila Kubba, one of eight women attending a recent candidate night at the Islamic center.
In Iraq, the campaign has been sharply curtailed by violence. In the United States, the challenges are different. Many would-be voters couldn't register because they live hundreds of miles from the five polling places. And how can voters who have lived abroad for years puzzle through 111 slates of Iraqi candidates?
Many Iraqi Americans in the Washington area say they have managed to keep up with their homeland's politics via the Internet and satellite television. Thanks to technology, they can reside in red and blue states but also inhabit a green one -- Iraq.
Members of the Kurdish minority, for example, can tune in to satellite channels run by the two main Iraqi Kurdish parties.
"Everybody watches it," said Najmaldin Karim, president of the Washington Kurdish Institute. "That's all we talk about."
Ali Attar, 41, a physician from McLean, said electoral patterns in the Washington area reflected those in Iraq. Local Kurds are expected to vote for the main Kurdish electoral list, he said. Some Sunnis are planning to boycott the balloting. And Shiites, who form the majority in Iraq, are expected to turn out heavily. Many Shiites see the elections as a way to claim the influence their group was denied under the brutal rule of Saddam Hussein.
But that doesn't mean the Shiites are voting in lock step.
At the candidate night Tuesday, a crowd of middle-age professionals turned out to hear Karim Khutar Al Musawi, a local representative of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. He told the audience that his predominantly Shiite party heads a coalition of 16 parties. One-third of the 228 candidates are female; 15 are Sunni, he said.
