Iraqi polling stations ran out of ballots, says president

Iraq’s interim president said that tens of thousands of people may have been unable to vote in the country’s historic weekend election because some polling places – including those in Sunni Arab areas – ran out of ballots.

As clerks entered vote-count tallies into computers to compile final results, President Ghazi al-Yawer also said yesterday that chaos and a power vacuum in Iraq mean US forces need to stay for now, even though a new government will be formed after the results are known.