Iraqi elections in 2014: a privacy requirement evaluation based on a polling place experience

Abstract

Democracy was not a well known term for the Iraqi people till 2003, when the US and coalition forces begun a military action against the Iraqi regime at that time. After that, the new constitution in Iraq allows the citizen to elect the government, the local governments, and the parliament, every 4 years. For this reason, the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) was established to manage, control, and run the elections. In the first two elections, the voting system was a “regular” paper-based system. Recently, in 2014, the process has been improved by making the voter authorization process electronic. In this paper, we will describe the latest voting system used in the Iraqi election and make some evaluation about the system fulfillments of privacy requirements, based on a polling station experience.