Reply #56: Violence depresses voter turnout

[ultraist]

snips
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=454755
At one voting center in the heavily Shiite Muslim city of Nasiriyah in the south, about 40 people lined up waiting to vote. But at a school-turned-polling station in Baghdad's middle-class Karrada neighborhood, a mixed Shiite-Sunni area, only three voters appeared in the first 45 minutes.

Under the eye of sharpshooters looking down from nearby rooftops, the three were searched first at an outer perimeter about 40 yards from the school, then they had to remove their jackets and take batteries from their cell phones before walking through coils of barbed wire.

Overhead, helicopters clattered and a jet fighter roared by. Occasional bursts of machine gun fire echoed through Baghdad's deserted streets.

Final results will not be known for seven to 10 days, but a preliminary tally was expected late Sunday. In the northern city of Kirkuk, buses hired by city officials picked up people walking toward voting centers to get them there more quickly.

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In a region of 600,000, only 150 people have voted. Reported by MSNBC