It is now after midnight in Iraq. Voting day has arrived:

I only write about that which I care about and so today I write about Iraq’s election which begins in a few hours. I’ve been here six months helping in the reconstruction effort and this is game day. Our Super Bowl.

That is Citizen Frank's introduction. You'd best go read the whole thing because Frank talks about history. And he talks about Infrastructure. And he talks about voting. And because he is there, in Iraq, witnessing history today.

My last post had a mock Saddam era ballot. It is a funny image, one that we can laugh about...here in the United States. The problem is that if you really think about it, it is not very funny at all. Why? Because it was reality for so many:

This theme crystallized for me in a recent conversation with a local Iraqi that guards our compound. His name is Dan. I spoke to him as my vehicle was being searched to enter our compound.

“Are you excited about the election, Dan?”

“No,” was his surprising answer. He could see in my face that I was surprised because Dan and I have talked a lot over the months and I knew how proud he was that Saddam was gone and I knew how brave he was to risk his life to work for the Americans.

“Are you not going to vote?”

“Oh yes, I will vote, but it is very hard.”

“Because of the threat of violence?”

“No, not hardly,” he smirked. “It is hard because we have so many candidates to choose from. My friends and I are trying to decide how to vote. We ask a lot of questions and research the choices. We find out something bad about one we put him in a pile,” he is making hand gestures like he is stacking ballots in two piles, “and we say we are not voting for that man. When we find ones that don’t have anything bad in their past then we still think about them. It is hard because we have lots of choices.” I was stunned. Back home we don’t consider candidates. Most of the time, if we even think to go vote, we just go vote and hope we remember a name or two.

“Well, that does sound hard. You must at least be excited about voting for the first time.”

“No, I’ve voted before. I voted every time I could for Saddam,” he said with disgust. I was the one that felt sick, I never could imagine Dan supporting Saddam. “On election day we would go to vote and our only choice was Saddam. We never had other choices. Some even cut themselves and voted in their own blood to show their loyalty to Saddam. It was always disgusting to me.”

Yes, Frank. The Superbowl next weekend will definitely be anti-climatic after today's contest.