Many swarm polls to vote

Election officials said that more than 10 million of 15 million registered voters had cast ballots.
Chicago Tribune
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqis of all sects, creeds and political persuasions swarmed to the polls Thursday in overwhelming numbers, setting aside their differences on a day of rare optimism for this strife-torn nation.
They were casting ballots for a wide array of political groupings offering starkly opposing visions of what the future Iraq should look like.
But those turning out to vote for their first full-term legislature since the fall of Saddam Hussein spoke only of their hopes that this election would finally heal the bitter divisions that have threatened to tear their country apart.
"This election is going to change everything, because everyone realizes now that the only way to take power is through the ballot box," said Abdullah Mohammed, 32, a television technician casting his ballot in the Baghdad neighborhood of Yarmouk. "This election is going to unite all Iraqis."
Election officials said that in excess of 10 million of Iraq's 15 million registered voters had cast ballots in this third and most significant of the three landmark elections this year, a million more than in October's referendum on a new constitution and nearly 2 million more than in January's election.
Hopes boosted
The apparently high turnout boosted hopes that the next Iraqi government will enjoy enough popular support to take the sting out of the Sunni-led insurgency and permit U.S. troops to start returning home next year. Swelling the numbers were large numbers of Sunnis, whose boycott of January's poll left them shut out of power and opened the door to the sectarian rivalries that have helped fuel much of the violence.
At the White House, President Bush called the election a "major milestone in the march to democracy." He congratulated Iraqis for "defying the terrorists and refusing to be cowed into not voting."
Bush had spent the two weeks leading up to Thursday's balloting on a media blitz, timing his message to culminate with images of ink-stained fingers. In four speeches, he said the word "victory" a total of 42 times.
The White House is hoping the campaign will boost sagging public support for a war that has been far costlier than it ever predicted.
Over 80 percent vote
At some Iraqi polling stations, turnout topped 80 percent. Ballot papers ran out in several places, including the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, where the mayor said about one-third of polling stations didn't get ballot boxes and many voters were turned away. Voting was extended by an hour nationwide because voters were still standing in line in some locations when the polls were due to close.
Long lines of voters snaked through the streets of the troubled city of Mosul, which has a large Sunni population and had a turnout of only 17 percent in January.
In the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, in the troubled western province of Anbar, voting was reported brisk at polling stations guarded by gunmen hired by local tribal sheiks.
The polls opened at 7 a.m. to the boom of a mortar explosion inside the fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad that injured three people, including a U.S. Marine.
Elsewhere, there were scattered reports of bombings in Fallujah, Mosul, Ramadi and Tal Afar. Three people were reported killed, including a man who died when a mortar exploded as he waited to vote near a polling station in Mosul.
But by the standards of an average day in Iraq, this one was remarkably peaceful.
Because of a complete ban on traffic to prevent suicide bombers, Iraqis walked to the polls, as they did on the two previous occasions.
Police and army soldiers kept watch with a practiced air as families strolled through the streets to vote and youths gathered on deserted highways to play soccer.
The significance of the election was not lost on those who cast their ballots. Whatever government emerges from this elected legislature will have a mandate to rule for the next four years, enough time to definitively shape Iraq's future, for better or worse.
"Real election"
"This is a real election," said Ammar Sami, 27, a player for Iraq's national basketball team who voted for the first time in the Yarmouk neighborhood. "The first one didn't mean anything, but this one will decide the fate of the country."
Most Sunnis now believe they made a grave error in ceding the last election to the Shiite majority and the Kurds who joined them in the current coalition government.
At one voting center in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Ameriyah, a notoriously violent stronghold of the Sunni insurgency where almost no one voted in January's election, more than 90 percent of registered voters had cast ballots by late afternoon, and people were still streaming in to vote.
"Our political thoughts have changed," said Ammar Yass, the polling station's director, who was among those who boycotted the last two polls.
"There were some mistakes made, and maybe you can justify what happened in some ways, but now we have a chance to set it right."