Iraqis to Vote at El Toro Polling Station

The former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Irvine will serve as the sole voting station for as many as 67,000 Iraqi Americans in the western United States to cast ballots in their homeland’s groundbreaking democratic election, officials announced Friday.

Voter registration begins Monday to elect Iraq’s 275-seat Transitional National Assembly. The voting will take place Jan. 28-30 in five U.S. cities and in 13 other nations.

The Irvine location is the only site of several considered where security will be paid by the federal government. Security has been a major concern in locating sites.

El Toro was closed in July 1999 but remains in the hands of the federal government, which pays the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to guard it. The land eventually will be developed into homes, businesses and parkland.

Basim Ridha Alhussaini, an Iraqi expatriate who is training 320 poll workers in Southern California, said the selection of El Toro represented a compromise location between Los Angeles and San Diego. In recent weeks, San Diego’s Iraqi community -- the largest in California at about 25,000 -- had lobbied for a voting station in their county, saying few people would drive to Los Angeles to register and then vote.

“We’re happy we accommodated everyone, and happy the election will take place on time,” Alhussaini said.

But Noori Barka, president of the Chaldean American Foundation in El Cajon, was not thrilled. “It’s still 100 miles away,” said Barka, whose organization represents the Christian Chaldo-Assyrian Americans of Iraqi descent. “I don’t know if it’s going to help.”

Election officials had hoped to open multiple voting sites and had considered the Fairplex in Pomona, the Forum and Hollywood Park Casino in Inglewood, as well as sites in Anaheim, Glendale and Los Angeles.

In a conference call last week with the White House, officials throughout the nation were told that the federal government would not provide funds for election security, according to Richard Adams, Pomona’s assistant city attorney who participated in the call. He said local officials voiced concerns that they would have to provide security without compensation.

Chicago, Detroit, Nashville, Tenn., and Washington will also have voting stations. People 18 years and older who were born in Iraq or whose father was born there are eligible to vote.

Rep. Christopher Cox, the Newport Beach Republican who heads the Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement that Orange County could be “proud to play this key role” in the Iraqi elections.

Voting and registration will take place at the old Officers Club.

Those desiring to vote can contact the Iraq Out-of-Country Voting Program at (800) 916-8292 or https://iraqocv.org.

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Times staff writer Jean Pasco contributed to this report.