A referendum on the monarchy in 1921 was followed by elections to the Constituent Assembly of 1924 which approved the text of a constitution later signed by the King in 1925.
Under the constitution of 1925, Iraq was a monarchy, with two Houses of Parliament, a Senate, appointed by the King, and a House of Representatives, elected every four years by men.
The House of Representatives contained 1 deputy for every 20,000 Iraqi men. The constitution mandated an election law that provided for a secret ballot and made special provision for non-Islamic minorities. Only men over 30 were eligible for election. A member was regarded as being representative of the whole of Iraq and not of his constituency alone.
See Hanna Batatu’s comment on the manipulation of the elections of this period on the Global Policy Forum website.
National elections were held every 4 years before the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958.
Between 1958 and 2003 Iraq was ruled by a series of military regimes.
National Assembly elections took place in the 1980s.
Saddam Hussein’s government reported that he had been elected President in 1995 with 99.96% of the vote and re-elected in October 2002 to a 7 year term as President by a 100% unanimous vote of all 11,445,638 eligible Iraqis.
Elections to the Transitional Assembly took place on 30 January 2005 and the first election to the Council of Representatives was on 15 December 2005 regulated by Law 16 of 2005 and a number of IECI (now IHEC) regulations. Elections are due by the end of January 2010 according the Federal Supreme Court decision of 13 May 2009.
The 2009 Electoral Law has had a prolonged labour.