Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) reported that a total of 3,789,360 people are eligible to vote in the upcoming elections, over 2.9 million of which have completed the biometric registration process.
Sulaimani has the highest number of registered voters across the Kurdistan Region with over 1.1 million people completing the biometric registration, out of nearly 1.5 million eligible. More than 1.3 million people are eligible to vote in Erbil, while Duhok has over 926,000 eligible voters.
In late June, Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani set October 20 as the date for the vote, two years after its originally scheduled date. Over 3.6 million people were announced to be eligible to vote in July 2023, around 150,000 less than the number announced on Monday.
Imad Jamil, media head for the IHEC, told Rudaw that the body will set up 23 polling stations across the central and southern provinces of the country during the Kurdistan Region's parliamentary elections.
The election process has been marred in difficulties, with interference from Baghdad fueling tensions between the Kurdistan Region’s parties - particularly differences between the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
