Iraq - 2005 - Transitional National Assembly, Constitutional Referendum, and Council of Representatives Elections
The December 2005 elections, Iraq’s first under its newly ratified constitution, marked a milestone with 76% of eligible voters—over 12 million—casting their ballots. The vote established a 275-member Council of Representatives, but the results highlighted Iraq’s deep sectarian divides. The Shiite-led United Iraqi Alliance secured 128 seats, the Kurdish Alliance won 53, and the Sunni-dominated Iraqi Accord Front claimed 44. While the strong turnout lent legitimacy to the process, the aftermath was marred by protests, ongoing violence, and months of tense negotiations before Iraq’s first constitutionally-based government was formed.
While most citizens voted on December 15, 2005, a special poll was held three days earlier for groups unable to vote on the main election day, including hospital patients, Iraqi security forces, and detainees. Among the polling sites was the Abu Ghraib Prison, where Tihana Bartulac Blanc, then an advisor to Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), oversaw voting under extraordinary conditions. In this recording, Tihana tells the story of how detainee violence, voter intimidation, and lack of voter education posed significant challenges to the process. Yet, despite these obstacles, the exercise succeeded, with over 3,000 detainees casting their votes in this landmark election at a detainee center.
Tihana Blanc is Democracy International’s Chief of Party for the USAID Support to Electoral Integrity project in Bosnia and Herzegovina . She has twenty years of experience managing political and electoral processes, civic engagement, and electoral reform around the world, including Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Kosovo, Afghanistan, Georgia, Ghana, Iraq, South Sudan and Somalia, working for different project implementers, including the OSCE, IOM, UNDP, and IFES.
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