Iraq's post-election de-baathification jeopardizes the legitimacy of the March 7th election.

The release of final results of the March 7th election by Iraq's Independent High Electoral commission officially started the process of forming a new cabinet.

This blog series on the 2010 Iraqi parliamentary elections is all about how Iraq has been working on building an inclusive, fair voting system. So far, the main focus has been on the Iraqi open-list form of proportional representation (PR), designed to overcome sectarian rifts and stabilize the country. It is now about time to take a closer look at women’s role in the Iraqi electoral process.

A couple of weeks ago, the Colombian Constitutional Court rejected legislation calling for a referendum that would have increased presidential term limits from two to three terms. This decision prevents President Alvaro Uribe from running for a third straight term in office and sends a strong signal to the international community: the burgeoning Colombian democracy won’t be part of the autocratic wave in South America.

Yesterday, about 18.9 million eligible Iraqis had the opportunity to elect their 325-member Council of Representatives through an open-list proportional system. Counting is now underway and the first partial results could be released later this week. In the meantime, there is a lot to be said about how this Iraqi election is impacting the country’s political future.

This Sunday, Iraq will elect its parliament for the third time in five years. For the first time, they will use an “open” list proportional system, which is seen as a major step to cement Iraqi democracy.

FairVote starts a series of comprehensive blog posts about the Iraqi 2010 parliamentary elections, focusing on how Iraq has been working on building an inclusive fair voting system by relying on proportional representation (PR) instead of winner-take-all. 

In the context of major distrust by British citizens of their almost 800 year-old democracy and their politicians, Gordon Brown proposed on February 2nd, in a speech at the Institute for Public Policy Research, to get rid of the UK’s “first-past-the-post” voting system.