Those Diebold Machines Were Sort of Suspicious…

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This doesn’t seem like good news:

Iraqi election officials said today that they were investigating what they described as “unusually high” vote totals in 12 Shiite and Kurdish provinces, where as many 99 percent of the voters were reported to have cast ballots in favor of Iraq’s new constitution, raising the possibility that the results of Saturday’s referendum could be called into question.

Unsaid in the piece, but still one of the bigger problems in Iraq, is the fact that many Sunnis believe that they comprise much, much more than 15-20 percent of the population. As a result, any electoral loss will likely be viewed with suspicion, conspiracy theories will abound, and even in a clean election it will be very hard to convince Sunnis that the Americans didn’t rig the vote against them. News like this (or this) certainly doesn’t help.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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