الـوســائــل الإلـكـتـرونـيــة في انـتـخـابـات مـجـلـس الــنـّـواب الـعـراقـــي ( دراســـة مــقـــارنــــة )

Electronic Means in the Iraqi Parliament Elections ( A Comparative Study(

ABSTRACT
This study examined the electronic means that are used in the elections of the House of Representatives, as these means are numerous and differ as a result of the difference in their emergence and development, which in turn vary at each electoral stage in the countries that use them, and Iraq is one of the countries that recently began using these means in parliamentary elections, owing to the significant developments in these elections and the mechanism for holding them. At the technical level, the 2014, 2018 and 2021 elections of the House of Representatives saw the use of electronic means of represented by mechanisms and equipment for biometric electronic registration of voters, electronic voter ID verification device, electronic counting and sorting device, and devices for electronic transmission of election results. The results of this study showed several obstacles that posed challenges to the use of these means, namely, the limited experience in dealing with them and the lack of technological professionals working in the Independent High Electoral Commission, and the almost total reliance on foreign experts and specialists for supervision and guidance on the use of these means. In addition to problems related to electronic registration and the difficulty or impossibility of reading the fingerprints of some voters at electoral stations, as well as problems encountered in the sorting process and electronic counting and its lack of conformity with the sorting and manual counting of votes at some stations, which led to its cancellation, furthermore the technical obstacles encountered in the process of electronic transmission of election results and the mechanism for announcing them.
At the legal level, the research in the previous Iraqi Council of Deputies Elections Act of 2013, enforcement No. 9 of 2020 and the Independent High Electoral Commission Act No. 31 of 2019 witnessed a very significant shortcoming in regulating these means and explaining the mechanism of their use . The Iraqi legislator merely mentioned electronic means in one article and mentioned them in other amendments in a provision not exceeding one line, and only referred to their use in elections according to the procedures carried out by the commission.
The last early parliamentary elections of 2021, organized under the Iraqi House of Representatives Elections Act No. 9 of 2020, which was better than the previous Act in some respects, knowing the biometric registration and providing for some aspects of it, in addition to clarifying the methods of sorting , counting and electronic transmission, despite these provisions , which have been introduced in the Commission’s Law and the Electoral Law of the Iraqi Chamber of Deputies in force, he has not organized many aspects related to electronic means. The articles regulating these means were scattered in several classes of this law. The legislator had to devote a law to the legal regulation of electronic means and indicate the competent authority, as well as their protection and control, and provide financial and administrative support for their use in parliamentary elections.
Keywords: Electronic Means, Iraqi House of Representatives Elections, Election Technology, Electoral Process