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Electoral workers sit with piles of ballot boxes at a counting center in Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, March 9, 2010. Iraqis are awaiting initial election results for Baghdad a key location accounting for almost a fifth of the country's ballots and other provinces. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Karim Kadim)
BAGHDAD - Iraq's election commission says ballots are still being counted in the historic parliamentary elections and backed off from an expected announcement of partial results.
The poll's complicated ballot - some 6,200 candidates competed for 325 parliamentary seats - means the count could take a long time.
Election officials earlier said initial results were to be released by Tuesday evening, after about 30 per cent of the ballots had been tallied. They later backed off from that announcement.
The commission's Qassim al-Aboudi said instead that "ballots were still being processed" and that partial results would be released Wednesday evening.
Iraqis defied insurgent attacks that killed 36 people to cast ballots on Sunday.
