Doug Struck of the Washington Post:
Despite threats, a rushed timetable and the murder of eight election workers, preparations for Iraq's elections are almost finished, according to the U.N. representative on the country's elections board.
"Everything is on track," Carlos Valenzuela, a veteran election organizer for the United Nations, said Sunday. "It was a very tight time frame. Luckily, there was no slippage."
Valenzuela, who has helped carry out elections in East Timor, Cambodia and the Palestinian territories, said he was surprised that logistics for the Jan. 30 elections have been assembled in less than a year. He shied from questions about whether the threats of violence that are expected to keep large numbers of voters home would irreparably mar the results.
"There isn't a yardstick" of turnout to pronounce the election valid, he said. "There is no magic number. At the end of the day, you have to leave it to the Iraqi public as to whether they believe this process was credible or not."
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