Militants' Campaign Twists Logistics of Iraq Election

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Militants' Campaign Twists Logistics of Iraq Election
Workers and candidates risk their lives and limit their visibility. Voting locations are still secret.
By Ashraf Khalil, Times Staff Writer

BAGHDAD — The parties have registered, the alliances have formed and the calls for a delay have mostly died down. With the first frantic stage of Iraq's landmark electoral saga past, planners face the nuts and bolts of holding a credible vote in four weeks' time.

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Organizers must also oversee the transport of 7 million pounds of equipment, including ballot boxes, ballots, special ink and 142,000 collapsible polling booths. Where those stations will be situated on election day has not yet been revealed.

But the lack of security on many highways makes trucking the supplies too risky. Sunday, an SUV carrying two suicide bombers exploded alongside an Iraqi troop bus on a road near Balad, northwest of the capital, killing 20 soldiers. So organizers will resort to what one electoral expert called "one of the largest airlifts this region has seen since the first Gulf War."

It would be an intimidating prospect even if organizers had the full month before the election to get everything in place. But the planners are concerned that insurgents will simply target warehouses, as in November, when a building full of registration forms was torched in Mosul.

The solution? They're waiting to deliver the equipment in the final 10 days before Jan. 30.

"It all goes back to the security situation," said the electoral expert, who has experience in Iraq. "It manifests itself in a lot of different ways."

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-nutsbolts3jan03,0,7338176.story?coll=la-home-headlines