Election law for Iraq

In the Better Late Than Never department, Iraq's parliament approved the long-delayed provincial elections law.

I'd have been a few hours ahead of the curve on this one, except my Iraqi news source, Aswat Aliraq, was out of action when I checked late last night.

BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: The Iraqi parliament on Wednesday unanimously voted on the provincial council elections law, MP Ahmed Anwar from the Kurdistan Alliance (KA) said.

The head of the Fadhila party Hassan al-Shemri had said earlier that the parliamentary bloc reached into an agreeing formula on the article 4 of the law regarding the lections in Kirkuk.
On July 22, the Iraqi Parliament, with the approval of 127 deputies out of 140 who attended the session, passed the law on provincial council elections, which includes an article postponing the elections in the city of Kirkuk.
Lawmakers from the Kurdistan Coalition (KC) had withdrawn from the session in protest against Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani's decision to have a secret balloting over article 24 of the law, pertaining to the status of Kirkuk. Balloting over all the other paragraphs of the law, however, was open.

(Aswat Aliraq)

The reporting on this story is interesting for the fact that Parliament "unanimously voted."

Such phrasing arises from the tendency of voting blocs to walk out on the assembly if things aren't going their way, and some may end up with the initial false impression that the law passed unanimously. While that was not the case, deputies approved the measure with an extremely solid 91 percent majority.