Iraqis in New York Begin Registration For Historic Vote
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Queens resident Abu Hussain is eagerly anticipating the weekend, when he will drive his entire family to a hotel outside of Washington to register to vote “for the future of Iraq.”
Registration began yesterday at polling stations in 14 countries around the world for Iraq’s first independent election in more than 50 years. For the 46-year-old Mr. Hussain, who fled Iraq for America a decade ago, this will be his first opportunity to vote.
“Iraq now is demolished. Also, the people are demolished,” said Mr. Hussain, who is undecided on the candidates. On Saturday, he has a day off from his job at a bookstore, and he plans to drive his family to New Carrolton, Md. The suburban Washington site is the nearest of five registration locations around America. The others are in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Nashville. Iraq is paying the multimillion-dollar price tag to run the international polling sites. The International Organization for Migration, a Geneva based nongovernmental organization, is supervising the process.
Registration will last seven days, ending January 23. Mr. Hussain and other New Yorkers must return to Washington on one of the three voting days ending January 30, when there will be an election in Iraq to select members of an assembly to draft a constitution and choose a president.
New York, where only roughly 1,000 people claim Iraqi ancestry according to the 2000 census, holds a tiny percentage of the 1.2 million Iraqis abroad who are likely eligible to vote. In New York, the greatest segment of the community consists of Iraqi Jews who began to arrive in the 1940s and 1950s.
One complaint Mr. Hussain and others shared was the inconvenience of traveling to the Washington voting site. They worried the distance would deter voters, who in order to cast a ballot would have to make two trips, one to register and then another a week later to vote.
“A lot of people from the East Coast are not going to be voting,” said Vahal Abdulrahman, 23, a Washington resident who registered yesterday, but said his family stayed home in Boston because “it’s just a hassle making two trips.”
Despite reports of confusion at voting centers around the world, for Mr. Abdulrahman, the actual registration process was simple and took just five minutes.
“I am extremely excited,” said Mr. Abdulrahman, who moved with his family to America eight years ago. “It’s the first time in my life that I am going to vote.”