Below is an article published by the Kurdish Globe:

At a press conference, the Commission announced the results on Thursday, 22 May [2014], at 12:00pm in Saad Abdullah conference hall in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

Every politician from all the parties, with the exception of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) ones, raised their eyebrows at the unexpected results.

The first political party that rejected the results was the Change Movement (Gorran). Gorran’s head of election room Aram Shiekh Mohammed told the Kurdish media that the votes are changed.

He said that there are documents to prove that the votes have been changed in favor of a political party. He indirectly mentioned the PUK.

All the political parties assigned electoral observers during the election day to monitor the process. They registered all the votes at the end of the day when the votes were counted. Later, they sent the results to the political parties.

Four major Kurdish parties in the province of Sulaimani, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Gorran, the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) and the Kurdistan Islamic Group (KIG) expressed their concerns about the results of the elections in Sulaimani.

The KDP also felt that its votes had been manipulated in Erbil, where it has controlled the power for the past 20 years. A KDP official said that his party was expected to win 13 seats instead of 12. Head of IHEC Sarbast Mustafa stated at the press conference that the results are 100% official.

The IHEC declared that the political parties filed some 87 complaints in both the special and the general elections for the Provincial Council Elections. The IHEC also reiterated that it checked the finger prints to make sure that no one voted more than once.

The results confirmed that the PUK’s share of the number seats has increased. This is in sharp contrast to the big defeat the party suffered in the last September [2013] elections.

The PUK is seemingly the most pleased party with both the Iraqi Legislative and the Kurdish Provincial Council Elections. It issued a statement and thanked all the PUK voters who participated in the elections. “Thank you, Thank you and Thank you,” the statement read.

Erbil
KDP: 372,607 (12 seats)
PUK: 168,603 (6 seats)
Gorran: 108,117 (4 seats)
Komal: 57,907 (2 seats)
KIU: 27,713 (1 seat)

Sulaimani
Voters: 906,643
Number of seat: 32
Gorran: 359,600 votes (12 seats)
PUK: 318,723 votes (11 seats)
KDP: 86,655 votes (3 seats)
Komal: 55,457 votes (2 seats)
KIU: 66,097 votes (2 seats)
National Coalition: 10,512 votes (1 seat)
Rafedain list: 255 votes (1 seat)

Duhok
Voters: 500,161
Number of seat: 28
Women seat: 9
KDP: 357,392 (19 seats)
KIU: 62,162 (3 seats)
PUK: 40,792 (2 seats)
Gorran: 22,855 (1 seat)
Rafedain: 4,086 (1 seat)
Assyrian list: 3,202 (1 seat)
Ishkhan Milko: 964 (1 seat)