Discrepancies, and a new ambassador in DC

'Fuzzy Math: Help me out with this one: a candidate no one had heard of before, Tawfiq Hashim Ali Al-Hashemi, running as an independent, gets 1,782 votes in the out-of-country poll, and a further 2,405 votes from the Iraqi military for a total of 4,184 votes in the ‘special poll’ tally. However, Al-Hashemi—who only ran in his home province of Misan—got a measly 463 ‘ordinary’ votes. So why did this obscure candidate running on the number ‘532’ get ten times more votes among the expatriate/military constituency when compared to his own backyard? Either someone inflated his numbers in the ‘special’ count, or deflated his home-base score. Either way it seems fishy, and it’s not as if he was getting the Florida treatment whereby elderly Holocaust survivors voted for Pat Buchanan by mistake; he is sandwiched between lists no. ‘531’ (Najib Salihi’s Free Officers and Civilians Movement) and no. ‘533’ (The Karbala Independent Coalition) on the ballot—both of which did poorly.

I’d hate to sound like the MARAMists, but the discrepancies keep piling up. For the record, it is now clear that the two ‘Sunni’ lists, the Consensus and Salih Al-Mutlag’s, were themselves involved in massive cheating in the three provinces of Nineveh, Salahuddin and Anbar. Many of the ballots from Sunni areas were disqualified (65 ballot boxes to be specific, from the Al-Rashid and Yusufiya suburbs of Baghdad), but part of the deal now with the Electoral Commission is to factor in these questionable votes as part of the final tally in order to placate the MARAMists and win them more seats in the parliament."
Talisman Gate