Iraq Recount: Muqtada Should Remain on Top

It's hard to limn the politics of Iraq's simmering constitutional crisis. On Wednesday parliament amended Iraq's election law, clearing the way for a total manual recount of the May 12 vote and sidelining the High Electoral Commission of Iraq.

It appears, based on "Iraqi Council to Oversee Manual Recount Amid Post-Election Chaos" by Falih Hassan and Margaret Coker, that the fraud is centered in Kurdistan and parts of the former caliphate:

Controversy increased again this week, when the electoral body announced that it had voided votes from 1,021 ballot boxes around the country, as well as ballots cast by Iraqi citizens overseas. It did not say which electoral districts the boxes came from, why the ballots were voided or what criteria it used in taking that action. 

The majority of fraud complaints have come from Kurdish regions in northern Iraq, and from some of the areas still struggling with security after the defeat of the Islamic State.

The story doesn't say which party ended up on top in that turf, but it wasn't Muqtada al-Sadr's Sairoon alliance. So Sairoon should remain on top after the national recount. Unless the recount is completely hijacked by corrupt forces seeking to maintain their sinecures. But that seems unlikely to me.