Iraqi-Americans turn out at base for last day of voting

IRVINE, Calif. - Dozens of immigrants from Iraq's minority Kurdish community sang and danced outside the polling station here Sunday in an impromptu celebration after casting absentee ballots in their homeland's first independent election in nearly 50 years.

The doors of the polling station at the decommissioned El Toro Marine Base opened Sunday while the election in Iraq was winding down, but that didn't dampen the enthusiasm of scores of Iraqi expatriates who flocked to the center. Some came from more than 1,000 miles away.

Kurdish women wearing colorful traditional dresses and men in loose tunics with wide bands of fabric wrapped around their waists waved flags outside, feasted on meat and vegetables and danced in a circle as Kurdish music blasted from a car stereo. A few feet away in the center's parking lot, a family of Christian Assyrians - another Iraqi ethnic minority - waved an Assyrian flag and showed off intricate tattoos of an Assyrian sun god and an Assyrian winged bull.

"We all left around 9 a.m. so we could get here at the same time and have a party after we voted," said Kaniah Zangana, 47, a Kurd who came with her sister and three children from San Diego. "This is history for us, because Kurdish people have never had a vote. They were always killed and poison-gassed by Saddam Hussein. This is a very special day for us."

Nearly 4,000 Iraqi immigrants signed up during a nine-day registration period to cast absentee ballots in Irvine, where election organizers established the only polling station for Iraqi expatriates west of the Mississippi. A total of seven polling stations were also set up at or near Detroit, Nashville, Tenn., Chicago and Washington, D.C. - all U.S. cities with large Iraqi immigrant populations.

Voters will elect a 275-National Assembly and 18 provincial legislatures. The assembly will draft Iraq's constitution and pick a prime minister and government.

Many voters said Sunday they had traveled hundreds of miles twice in the past two weeks - once to register in person and once to vote. Inside the polling station, poll workers clapped and cheered as one voter after another dropped a ballot in a large, clear plastic box.