I’m a bit puzzled about something. CNN, in writing about what appears to be a well-executed election in Iraq yesterday, reports that “more than 14.2 million Iraqis were registered for the vote.” Curious what sort of a registration level that represented, I headed over to the CIA World Factbook, which reports that Iraq has a population of 25.3 million. A little back-of-the-envelope math yields that 56% of Iraqis are registered to vote, which compares extremely favorably to the 44% of Americans that are registered.
Is it possible that Iraqis are far more engaged in the political process, despite the threats by rebels that they would “wash the streets with the blood” of those who dared participate in the process?
Not so much, or so it appears to me. Those percentage figures that I’ve listed above are based on the total population, not the eligible population. In order to vote in yesterday’s elections, Iraqis had to be born before December 31, 1986, which is to say that they had to be 18 years of age. And as the CIA World Factbook reports, a whopping 40% of the country’s population is under the age of 15, leaving somewhat under 60% of the country eligible to vote. Conservatively shaving that eligible population down to 55%, that’s 13,900,000 who could hypothetically register.
You’ll note that 13.9 million is rather less than the 14.2 million Iraqis who are said to have registered to vote.
Is this a case of massive voter fraud? Is perhaps the CIA wrong about the nation’s population? Or the population/age proportion? Or are the voter registration figures wrong? Am I missing something?
Somebody enlighten me, please.
Maybe they’re counting the ex-pats. (And the election was today, not yesterday. I’m just saying.)
Ah, I hadn’t even thought of ex-pats. I wonder how many ex-pats that there are? Presumably, quite a large number, what with it being a country that few have been eager to continue to live in for the past half century.
I’m not really sure of how to refer to days, in a relative sense, on the other side of the world. I find whatever word I pick (yesterday, today, tomorrow) just works out to be wrong. Recently, on a mailing list on which I’m a member, somebody who was flying to Europe on New Year’s Eve enlisted the help of others to determine when in her flight she should celebrate the new year. It was quite confusing to try to muddle through. The conclusion, incidentally, was that she would never encounter midnight.
CNN writes that “election officials estimate 1 million Iraqis living outside their country will be eligible to vote.” Assuming 100% registration of those eligible, we’ve removed the impossible, and we’re left with the implausible — that 90-something percent of eligible voters registered.
Unless, of course, there’s another factor — like the expatriates — that further explains things.