2013 Iraqi Governorate Elections -Saturday April 20,2013

Governorate or provincial elections are currently scheduled  for April 20,2013, to replace the local councils in the Governorates of Iraq  that were elected in the 2009 Iraqi Governorate Elections

Elections will take place in 15 of Iraqs 18 governorates, with the 3 governorates forming the Kurdistan Region  not taking part, for a total of 447 provincial council seats

 Electoral Law
The current electoral law, which was also used in the 2009 election, states that if certain parties don't get enough votes, their votes and seats are given to the larger parties.The Supreme Court of Iraq declared the Law as Unconstitutional as it restricts Democracy.

As a result,the Independent High Electoral Commission  called on the Iraqi government to pass changes to the law.In response to this, on 13 December 2012 the Iraqi parliament voted to adopt the Sainte-Lague Method as the new electoral method
After all the votes have been tallied, successive quotients  are calculated for each party. The formula for the quotient is

where:

• V is the total number of votes that party received, and
• s is the number of seats that party has been allocated so far, initially 0 for all parties.

Whichever party has the highest quotient gets the next seat allocated, and their quotient is recalculated given their new seat total. The process is repeated until all seats have been allocated.
The Sainte-Laguë method does not ensure that a party receiving more than half the votes will win at least half the seats; nor does its modified form.

According to IHEC, a total of 8,224 candidates have registered to run in the elections, including 131 candidates who have since been barred by IHEC from running due to their ties to the Iraqi Ba'ath Party

Iraq PM Nouri Maliki's bloc leads provincial elections

Almost 14 million Iraqis were eligible to vote for more than 8,000 candidates competing for 378 seats in provincial councils on 20 April

Election officials put the turnout at around 50% 

The Shia-led coalition led by Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki has come first in seven of 12 provinces, including Baghdad

Its main rival, the Sunni-dominated Iraqiya bloc, suffered poor results.

Observers say the results give an indication of political support ahead of next year's parliamentary elections.