3M Iraqis waiting on biometric voting card

More than 87 percent of eligible voters in Iraq have received a biometric voting card in preparation for the country’s legislative elections on November 11th.

Around 19 million of the total 21.7 million Iraqis eligible to vote using the biometric card have received one, Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) announced last week. The agency plans to distribute the remaining three million cards through mobile teams, media campaigns and registration centers.

“We expect to complete this distribution during September and October,” says Imad Jamil, head of media for IHEC.

The Nineveh Governorate recorded the highest number of voter record updates in Iraq, with more than 300,000 new registrations during the 85-day nationwide voter registration campaign. The Northern region, with its capital in Mosul, has approximately 2.9 million eligible voters, of whom 2.09 million possess voter cards. Around 840,000 citizens are yet to update their records.

Iraq officially completed its the voter registration campaign in June, following several deadline extensions. The total number of Iraqis who renewed their biometric registration stood at 21,400,089 at the time. However, 18.4 percent of the Kurdistan Region failed to renew their registration, amounting to a “pre-election boycott,” according to local media.

Iraq’s most recent census, conducted in November 2024, shows that the country’s population stands at 46.1 million.

IHEC also successfully conducted a simulation exercise, which included testing the security of the voting system, according to news outlet Rudaw.

“The voting device software prevented all the attempted breaches we tested, including proxy voting or multiple voting attempts, as the biometric voting card becomes invalid after a single use,” adds Jamil.

Article Topics

biometric cards  |  biometrics  |  digital ID  |  Iraq  |  voter identification  |  voter registration