Iraq election and delays

Final results from the Iraq election were supposed to be released tomorrow. The key word in the previous sentence is "were." The AP's Mariam Fam filed this report this morning:

Iraqi officials said Wednesday that the announcement of final results from landmark national elections will be delayed because the election commission must recount votes from about 300 ballot boxes.

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Final results from the Jan. 30 election were to be announced on Thursday. But spokesman Farid Ayar said the deadline would slip due to the need for a recount.

''We don't know when this will finish,'' he said. ''This will lead to a little postponement in announcing the results.''

Ayar would not say where the 300 ballot boxes had come from.

No new partial results have been released since Monday for the voting for the 275-member National Assembly, 18 provincial councils and a regional parliament for the Kurdish self-governing region in the north.

Excuse me while I adjust my tinfoil hat, but this sounds a little suspicious to me. Fam's report provides the basis for my concern. After noting that the Shiite alliance was in the lead, the Kurdish parties were in second place, and the party of interim prime minister Allawi was a distant third, Fam wrote the following:

If that reflects the final lineup it appears unlikely that Allawi, a secular Shiite who favors strong ties to the United States and a tough stand against the insurgents, could emerge as a compromise choice for prime minister when the new assembly convenes by early March.

So, the day before the final results were to be announced (after 10 days of counting votes), it appears that the party that the Bush administration wanted to win has no shot of getting significant power, and there is a need to recount the votes from 300 ballot boxes. The officials who called for the recount have given no reason for it, nor will they say from where the ballot boxes come, and they say there is no way to know when the recount will be finished.

How do you say "Florida" in Arabic?