Palmer is glorifying an election in which the names of the candidates are not even known

Palmer is glorifying an election in which the names of the candidates are not even known: in which every third

name on the various party lists must be a woman, and which is confusing in many other ways, as pointed out by

Harris:

“There are many confusing elements to this campaign. One is that it’s not a vote for individual candidates,

but slates of up to 275 candidates (that’s the number of seats there will be in this new, transitional

parliament). Many of the slates have very similar names, and if they have platforms at all they are very

general—such as security, basic services, etc. And very few of the names of the people running on a slate are

public. So voters don’t know exactly who they are choosing to be in Parliament, even as they support a

particular slate. The electoral commission has not yet released the names. Although I have understood this was

for security reasons, I am told by an advisor to the electoral commission that this is largely because of

logistics—they only managed to enter some of the names of people running. This advisor was uncertain whether

the names of the actual people who would be sitting in Parliament will be available to voters, even at polling

stations, by election day. Only one party I know has published the names of its candidates on campaign

materials. Others do cite security—this was the reaction of the agriculture minister when asked what number she

is on Allawi’s slate: She said No. 3, then giggled, and said she wasn’t sure she was supposed to say because

of security.”