Inside the grandiosely named Exhibition Center at the New Carrollton Ramada Inn -- which yesterday actually looked more like a scuffed-up storage area -- there were all the humdrum trappings of a U.S. Election Day.
Flimsy blue curtains cordoned off voting areas with flimsy cardboard booths. Redundant posters touted the virtues of voting -- saying such things as: "Your Voice is the Future" -- to people who had come there to vote and didn't seem to need convincing.
Jamila Rusel, an Iraqi Kurd, prepares sons Dear Haji, 2, and Zhear Haji, 4, for the trip home to Harrisonburg, Pa., after she voted at the New Carrollton Ramada Inn.
(Andrea Bruce Woodall -- The Washington Post)
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But yesterday, on the third and final day that Iraqi immigrants could cast ballots in the United States for their country's new National Assembly, this familiar setting still had a special electricity.
At least two men came to the polling place wearing Iraqi flags draped around their necks like a soccer player or an Olympic champion. One woman had an election worker with a video camera follow her through the voting process as she stopped to pose with her ballot or ink-stained finger at every step.
And many voters got a small round of applause simply for dropping their ballot into the clear, plastic box.
"First time in my life I feel that I am a human being, because I can elect the people who rule my country," said Saleh Haery, 70, who left Iraq in 1980 and flew from Vienna, Austria, to vote in New Carrollton.
Many who voted said they have been following events in Iraq, where yesterday marked the first free national elections in a half-century. They said they were heartened by reports that voter turnout was high there and that violence from insurgents had not been widespread.
"I'm really proud of them," said Shwan Mirza, 28, a Fairfax resident born in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
The New Carrollton polling place was one of five U.S. sites for Iraqi voting, along with the Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and Nashville areas.
Officials with the International Organization for Migration, the group coordinating the polling, said about 2,000 people had registered to vote in New Carrollton, out of an estimated 22,000 people eligible along the East Coast. Those eligible included Iraqi citizens, people with an Iraqi father and Iraqis who had renounced or lost their citizenship under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.
By yesterday afternoon, about 90 percent of those registered in New Carrollton had voted, according to Jeremy Copeland, a spokesman for the International Organization for Migration. In all, he said, more than 20,000 votes were cast across the United States, which was one of 14 countries offering Iraqi immigrants a place to vote.
Voters were handed a ballot more than a foot long, containing more than 100 political entities identified by name, number and symbol. The tiny logos by each name included a small menagerie of political animals -- a lion for the Alliance of Peace and Liberation, a honeybee for the Iraqi Islamic Party and a bird of prey for the Iraqi National Gathering.
Voters had their fingers marked with purple ink to prevent re-voting, placed a check by one name and put the ballot into a box. It was a quick and quiet process but one that stirred emotions for many voters.
"It's a great thing. Our nation is practicing our freedom," said Ahmad al Haeri, a Shiite religious scholar who left Karbala 16 years ago and lives in Rockville.
Gona Hamaraheem, 19, wore a glittering green dress fit for a Kurdish wedding or national celebration to the polling place. After casting her ballot, Hamaraheem said yesterday was just as important, since it signaled that the repressive policies of Hussein toward the Kurds were in the past.
Voting provided a similar thrill for Carole Basri, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Basri, whose father was Iraqi, gave her video camera to an election volunteer and had him follow her through the voting process.
After several minutes of stopping and posing, Basri reached the ballot box. She was so excited that she started to unfold her ballot and show the camera which slate she had checked off. An official stopped her before any electoral secrets were revealed.
"To me, this is like the Declaration of Independence," Basri said afterward. "This is the first act of a new country."
Many of the voters said they hoped a successful election would deflate the insurrection that has raged in Iraq for two years.
In fact, many said their hopes were to someday create a country where elections are as familiar and routine as they are in the United States.
"Hopefully, we'll do that every four years," Mirza said, after casting his ballot.
