Special voting begins in Iraq ahead of national poll

BAGHDAD, March 4 (Xinhua) -- A special voting in Iraq started on Thursday as security forces, hospital patients and prisoners went to polling stations to cast their ballots for the parliamentary election that takes place on Sunday.

An inmate shows his ink-stained finger after voting inside a prison in Arbil, 310 km (190 miles) north of Baghdad March 4, 2010. Iraqi troops, police, prisoners and the infirm began voting on Thursday, three days ahead of a parliamentary election seen as pivotal for a divided country which U.S. troops are scheduled to leave by the end of 2011. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, police, doctors, patients, hospital staff and prisoners are expected to take part in the early election on Thursday as they will not be able to cast their votes on the polls day on Sunday as they either will be working or can not reach the polls centers.

"We have pretty good turnout since the morning and everything is going smoothly," said Hussien al-Taie, head of media office of the electoral commission in Baghdad's eastern part of Risafa.

Qassim Atta, spokesman of Baghdad Operation Command, said the Iraqi security forces have beefed up security to secure all the polling centers across Baghdad.

"Our troops deployed all over the capital and till now before noon we haven't receive any report about security violations. Life is normal in Baghdad today and the security measures of all of our troops are smoothly going on," Atta said in an interview with the state-run television of Iraqia.

However, Atta complained that many of his troops including himself could not find their names in the lists of voters that issued by the Iraqi Independent Higher Election Commission (IHEC).

"Many of our soldiers and policemen could not find their names in the voting lists, including security members affiliated to the office of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the commander in chief of the Iraqi security forces," Atta told the channel.

"Many of the troopers here in this polling center in downtown Baghdad could not find their names, and I am one of them," Atta said.

"I wish our brothers in the commission (IHEC) to intervene to solve the problem because there is kind of discomfort among those who could not find their names in at least two polling centers that I know," Atta said, adding that the IHEC would "certainly do its best to solve such confusion."

More than 800,000 Iraqis, including 250,000 Iraqi security members in Baghdad, are expected to take part in the country's special voting in 460 polling centers that include some 1,700 ballot station across the country.

According to electoral organizers, some 19 million Iraqis, including 1.4 million living abroad in 16 countries, are eligible to vote for the 325-seat Iraq's Council of Representatives with some 6,300 candidates.

The election is regarded as crucial for the country's national reconciliation and political process as it has been struggling to improve security situation in the past several years and preparing itself for a planned full withdrawal of U.S troops at the end of 2011.