The first ballots cast

Iraqis living abroad joyfully cast the first ballots on Friday in their homeland's landmark election and urged countrymen back home to defy insurgents and vote for a democratic Iraq.

"I have been waiting for this day, I have been dreaming of this day to tell my grandchildren that in the first election in the history of Iraq I was the first woman to vote," Lamaa Jamal Talabani, 60, said outside an Amman polling station.

Security was tight at polling venues in Syria, Jordan, and Turkey with police cutting off traffic with roadblocks. Guards with metal detectors searched everyone going into the stations.

"I am ecstatic to have passed through this experience at last. This (election) might cause a difference, not necessarily right away but eventually," said Sara Masoud, a student who has lived in Syria for eight years.

In Australia, Iraqis danced in the streets, twirling scarves and singing, and proudly displaying blue ink on their fingers which told the world they had cast the first votes.

"When I look at the ink on my finger -- this is a mark of freedom," said Kassim Abood, outside a polling booth in a disused furniture warehouse in western Sydney.

[...]

"People should not be afraid to vote," said Nassima Barzani, 68, proudly clutching an Iraqi flag close to her chest as she cast her ballot in Sydney, where security was light.
  article

Dude. You're in Australia.

But nearby, dissenting Kurds handed out leaflets calling for an election boycott and Kurdish independence. "Many Kurds think they are voting for an independent Kurdistan. They've been duped plain and simple," said Nabiz Khalid.

Well, that should be interesting after they find out what happened.

There seems to me to be something just wrong, in something so historical to Iraqis, about having the first votes ever cast to be outside their country. Couldn't those votes have waited until after somebody in Iraq actually cast a ballot?