EU's Stevenson alleges further voter fraud in Baghdad

"The steady flow of allegations has now become a flood. In the past 36 hours I have received first-hand accounts of countless blank ballots being filled in primarily to benefit the State of Law coalition (Nouri Al-Maliki) list in Sadr City in Baghdad, particularly in the predominantly Sunni neighbourhoods of Al-Adhamia, Zeyoona, Al-Fadhl, Share'a Felestin and Al-Selekh. In many cases thousands of ballot papers were marked with a second tick to render them invalid. One report stated that many thousands of ballot papers marked in favour of Iraqiya list (Ayad Allawi) had been discovered on a Baghdad rubbish dump. Also scores of military personnel were prevented from voting because their names did not appear on any register."

Stevenson's litany of complaints continues in other provinces, with allegations of voter intimidation in Diyala and elsewhere. Stevenson says he will present a "large dossier of evidence" to the European Parliament on Wednesday afternoon.

Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission issued an angry statement about Stevenson's remarks, pointing out that he's a politician -- not an electoral monitor -- and that the European Union monitoring team hasn't raised any formal complaints about the vote. Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, praised the high turnout last week and said nothing about any allegations of voter fraud.

Who's right? As we said on Friday, claims of voter fraud or tampering are difficult to vet. Stevenson is indeed not an official monitor, though -- in fact, he wasn't even certified as an observer on election day. Thus all of his allegations are based on secondhand evidence; it's telling that we haven't heard any complaints of systemic fraud from the monitors who were actually at Iraqi polling stations.

And Stevenson's decision to slowly leak his allegations to the media, rather than presenting them to Iraqi officials, is a bit bizarre.