Iraqis go to polls for key vote

In sermons in mosques across the nation, advice to voters varied.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The lights went out just after Iraqis finished their sunset meal ending the day's Ramadan fast. Huge swaths of Baghdad went black. Surrounding towns were covered in darkness. As the hours without power dragged on, water began to run out in some homes.
Sunni-led insurgents found a way to strike Friday on the eve of Iraq's landmark vote on a new constitution despite the heavy clampdown imposed in towns and cities around the country by Iraqi and U.S. forces to assure Iraqis that it is safe to go to the polls.
Still, it was not a suicide bombing or a car bomb ripping through a market, as has happened in days leading up to the vote -- suggesting security measures may have hampered militants from operating in the cities.
Hit electricity towers
Instead, they hit 180 miles north of Baghdad, knocking out electricity towers that carry the lines through the unprotected countryside. Electricity Ministry workers were rushing to repair the damage and restore power, and by midnight -- six hours after the lights went out -- electricity was returning to parts of Baghdad.
The ministry could not guarantee all would be back to normal by the time polls open today. That will not affect the actual casting of votes -- which is done by paper ballots, not machines -- but the strike could intimidate some Iraqis from going to the polls.
For most of the day, Iraqis remained home, with the streets of the Iraqi capital almost empty hours before a 10 p.m. curfew and the country sealed off from the outside world as borders and airports were closed ahead of the vote.
In recent weeks, Sunni-led insurgents have waged a campaign of violence that killed hundreds, hoping to scare Iraqis from voting on the constitution.
Voting either "yes" or "no," Iraqis will determine today the fate of a proposed U.S.-backed constitution and potentially decide whether their nation continues hurtling toward civil war or steps closer to reconciliation.
The nationwide referendum marks the second opportunity since January for Iraqis to flex their new democratic muscle, although many voters complain they will be voting blindly because they have not had enough time to read the draft constitution.
Hoped-for effects
The Bush administration and other Western nations have embraced the draft as the best hope for quelling an increasingly bloody insurgency.
Daily bombings have killed thousands and dramatically reduced public support for the U.S.-led military presence in Iraq. Approval of the constitution would give the new government a sense of legitimacy and keep parliamentary elections, now scheduled for December, on track.
Approval of the constitution is by no means guaranteed. Under electoral rules, a simple majority must vote "yes" for the constitution to pass. But that decision can be overturned if two-thirds of voters in at least three provinces vote "no." Arab Sunnis, who form a sizable majority in four provinces, are being pressured by militants to reject the draft.
If the "no" vote wins, Iraqis would have to elect a new interim assembly in December, endure additional months of wrangling and potential bloodshed, and then return to the polls for another constitutional referendum in 2006.
In Friday sermons across the nation, the message from Shiite pulpits was an unequivocal "yes," but it was not so clear-cut in Sunni Arab mosques -- varying from "yes," "no" and "vote your conscience."
Insurgents, meanwhile, detonated a bomb outside the Sunni Islamic Party's office in central Baghdad, then set fire to the party's main office in Fallujah. Nobody was injured in what were apparently symbolic attacks against that group's recent decision to support the charter.
Support for document
"Besides Allah, we need this constitution to protect us," said Rajha Abdul-Jabar, a 49-year-old Sunni Arab mother of five married to a Kurdish dentist. "I, my husband and our children will go and vote yes tomorrow," she said in the small convenience store she runs.
Kurds, a sizable minority that is mainly Sunni, fully support the charter.
Jameel Safar, a 30-year-old Kurd in Baghdad, said the charter will safeguard Iraq's unity, but later added: "The Kurds are entitled to everything. We have a right to our own nation like everyone else."
Tens of thousands of Iraqi army troops and policemen, meanwhile, formed security rings around the nation's estimated 6,000 polling stations and set up checkpoints on highways and inside cities.
The capital's streets were virtually deserted by late afternoon. Most shops did not open at all. Those that did closed early. Lines of cars a mile long waiting to fill up at gas stations provided one of the few signs of normalcy.
Iraq's Kurdish President Jalal Talabani and Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari appeared on television late Friday to make last-minute appeals for a "yes" vote.
Most of Iraq's Shiites, about 60 percent of an estimated 27 million population, were expected to approve the charter, especially after Shiite spiritual leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called on followers to do so.
TV broadcasts
In an effort to familiarize voters with the draft, local TV stations aired readings of amendments adopted this week, too late to be included in the U.N.-printed text distributed to Iraqis.
Those amendments persuaded the Iraqi Islamic Party, the country's largest Sunni Arab political group, to drop its opposition to the draft and call on its supporters to vote in favor of the constitution.
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