Final results from Iraq's landmark referendum on a new constitution will likely not be announced until Friday at the earliest because of delays getting counts to the capital and a wide-ranging audit following allegations of voting irregularities.
The outcome of the crucial referendum will remain uncertain possibly into next week, at a time when the government had hoped to move public attention to a new milestone: the start of the trial of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein today.
The audit, announced by the Electoral Commission on Monday, will examine results that show an oddly high number of YES votes - apparently including in two crucial provinces that could determine the outcome of the vote, Ninevah and Diyala.
The election commission and United Nations officials supervising the counting have made no mention of fraud and have cautioned that the unexpected votes are not necessarily incorrect.
However, Sunni Arab leaders who oppose the charter have claimed the vote was fixed in Ninevah and Diyala and elsewhere to swing the result after initial results reported by provincial officials indicated the constitution had passed.
Both provinces are believed to have slight Sunni Arab majorities that likely voted NO in large numbers, along with significant Shia and Kurdish communities that largely cast YES ballots. But initial results from election officials in Ninevah and Diyala indicated about 70 percent of voters supported the charter and only 20 percent rejected.
Sunni opponents needed to win over either Diyala or Ninevah to veto the constitution. Sunnis had to get a two-thirds "no" vote in any three of Iraq's 18 provinces to defeat the charter, and they appeared to have gotten it in Anbar and Salahuddin, both heavily Sunni.
The counting process is complicated. Ballots are counted at the polling stations, where officials fill out a results sheet for each ballot box. One copy of the sheet remains at the station, another is sealed inside the ballot box, which is sent to the provincial capital for storage. A third copy of the sheet goes on to Baghdad, carried in transparent, sealed bags piled with other sheets.
At the central counting center in Baghdad, workers were cutting open the bags and logging numbers from the results sheets into computers. The auditing teams will go to the provinces to compare unusual results sheets with their other copies, and open ballot boxes to count votes if necessary.