To my esteemed colleague, Jeff Schneider:

You wrote that the news of a vote in Sadr City to determine which candidate the Sadrist MPs would support was a positive development.  I respectfully disagree.  Or, if you prefer the immortal words of Dan Aykroyd, Jeff, you ignorant slut.

First of all, these "elections" are entirely unmonitored.  As the New York Times reported,

There were no lists of eligible voters, no one was required to show identification and apparently there was no way to prevent people from voting more than once...
Zaman Jabar, 30, who helped organize the process, said traditional election standards like registering voters and requiring identification were not necessary.
“We know all the voters in our sector here,” he said. “All of them are our people.”

Forgive me for being dubious that Mr. Jabar knows every resident in the Sadr City area of Baghdad.  The situation cries out for fraud.  I don't think al-Maliki or Allawi are able to overrun the polling places with their supporters to sway the results, but I do believe that the lack of formal accounting mechanisms will allow Muqtada al-Sadr to declare his support for which candidate he decides.

In short, the entire "election" is a sham, and the end result will be the same - whichever party does the best job bribing Sadr will get his support.  And the bribing has already begun.  Juan Cole relays the news that al-Maliki already began releasing Sadrist political prisoners.

Furthermore, Sunni-Shia divisions are driving this process, not democracy. 

The headline from Sadr City, March 10, 2004:

Militants take control of huge Baghdad slum / Sadr City locked up by gunmen loyal to rebel Muslim cleric

The headline today?

Iraq's Sadrists hold vote for prime minister choice

What a difference an effective COIN operation makes.

Sadr City, the Shia dominated slums of Baghdad -- long oppressed, forgotten, and marginalized under the Ba'athist regime of Sadam Hussein, was once the most dangerous area of Baghdad. The powerful, yet irregular mehdi army, under the command of Muqtada al-Sadr, once rejected the new Iraqi government -- and American forces -- to the last. They attacked armed patrols and civil servants alike, and directly opposed the central government of post-invasion Iraq.

Today, the story is very different:

(Reuters) - Supporters of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stood in long lines on Friday to vote their choice for prime minister of Iraq in a two-day referendum that carried no government sanction or legal weight.

The unusual plebiscite is organized by Sadr's political movement, which won about 40 seats in a March 7 parliamentary election and stands to play a kingmaker role in the next government, was intended to determine the public favorite for prime minister after squabbling among election winners.

The background?

(more after the jump)