Panel: Fraud in Iraqi election 'very small'

A U.S. helicopter crashed, killing two crew members.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's electoral commission said Monday that it threw out less than 1 percent of the ballots in last month's election because of voting irregularities, an amount not expected to significantly change the outcome.
The announcement moves Iraq a step closer to announcing the final results of the Dec. 15 parliamentary vote, an event expected to trigger intense negotiations among the election's big winners to form a governing coalition for the next four years.
The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq received almost 2,000 complaints of fraud or other forms of misconduct in the election. Yet only 58 of those complaints had the potential to change the election's outcome, according to the commission.
After examining those 58, the commission decided to annul 227 ballot boxes out of the nationwide total of 31,500, said Hussein Hendawi of the commission. The commission found various irregularities, including fake ballots and more ballots than registered voters.
Comparison with last year
Compared with Iraq's first parliamentary election a year ago, the degree of fraud was "very, very small," Hendawi said. Although he wouldn't specify how the commission's action would affect the election result, the percentage of annulled boxes is too small to significantly alter the outcome.
Preliminary results show that Iraq's main Shiite political group, which allied with a Kurdish group to form the current government, again won the largest share of the vote. Sunni groups, which participated in Iraq's fledgling electoral process for the first time, and secular Shiite groups lodged most of the complaints in the latest election.
Saleh al-Mutlaq, the leader of one such Sunni group, said he was dissatisfied with the commission's action. It was unfair to throw out all the ballots in suspect boxes instead of just the bad ballots, he said, because it penalizes voters and candidates who played by the rules.
"There will be a lot of good votes canceled," al-Mutlaq said. "The damage they are going to cause this way is worse than correcting it."
Helicopter crash
Also Monday, a U.S. military helicopter crashed north of the Iraqi capital -- the third American chopper to go down in 10 days -- killing the two crew members. A resident said he saw the smoke trail of a missile before the aircraft plunged to the ground.
The military said the AH-64 Apache was conducting a combat air patrol when it went down in an area "known for terrorist activity." Officials said it was too early to determine the cause of the crash, and the names of the dead soldiers were not released. Apaches hold only a pilot and a co-pilot.
Video footage shot by AP Television News in Mishahda, north of Baghdad, showed smoke billowing from what was reported to be the crash site. Helicopters circled nearby.
Two militant groups claimed they shot down the helicopter. Neither claim could be verified.
Witness's description
Rashid Khalifa, 27, who has a food and drink stand in the area, said he saw the attack. "I saw the smoke trail left by the missile," he said. "I heard a hissing sound, looked around and saw the helicopter losing control before crashing down."
The U.S. command questioned the credibility of a video purportedly showing an attack on a helicopter that was posted on the Internet by one of the militant groups, the Mujahedeen Army.
The wobbly video showed a militant firing a shoulder-launched missile toward what appeared to be a helicopter in the distance. The aircraft in the video was hit, burst into flames and crashed to the ground.
"A review of the footage on television of a missile being fired does not appear to show this incident today, which remains under investigation," said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a U.S. spokesman.
"This appears to be another case of terrorists attempting to manipulate a tragic incident in the international media and getting the most news value out of it by using footage of something else to gain greater attention," he added.
The other group that claimed in an Internet posting that it shot down the helicopter was the Salahudin al-Ayoubi Brigade. Both groups have carried out previous attacks.
Crashes spike
The number of fatal U.S. military helicopter crashes in Iraq has spiked in recent weeks, fitting a wartime pattern of more frequent accidental and combat crashes during winter months.
An OH-58 Kiowa Warrior reconnaissance helicopter crashed near the northern city of Mosul on Friday, killing two pilots. On Jan. 7, a Black Hawk with 12 aboard crashed in bad weather near the northern city of Tal Afar. All eight soldiers and four civilians aboard were killed.
The causes of those crashes have yet to be announced.