Category: Political, from Wikidata’s class “public election”
2002 Iraqi presidential referendum
Wikidata classes on our event-class list: public election (all its classes: Wikidata item)
A presidential referendum took place in Iraq on October 16, 2002. It was the second presidential election under the rule of Saddam Hussein (the first having taken place in 1995). According to official statistics, the turnout was 100%, with all 11,445,638 Iraqis registered to vote having voted "yes" in a referendum whether to support another seven year-term for President Saddam Hussein, which would legally have ended in 2009.
The referendum is considered to have been fraudulent, and was dismissed as propaganda by the United States and Britain. White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said: "Obviously, it's not a very serious day, not a very serious vote and nobody places any credibility on it". United States State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called it "not even worthy of our ridicule". Foreign election observers were banned from observing the vote, and journalists were confined to a specific area; as such, actual voter turnout could not be estimated. The Washington Post noted that no explanation was given to explain how all the alleged votes were counted overnight. Top Iraqi deputy Izzat Ibrahim affirmed the vote's legitimacy, saying: "You may like it or not, but this is a truthful figure."
Text retrieved 2026-10-06 from Wikipedia.
Cite this
The link is the Wikipedia revision of June 21, 2026 (revision 1360377583), whose lead is exactly the text shown here.
APA 7
2002 Iraqi presidential referendum. (2026, June 21). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2002_Iraqi_presidential_referendum&oldid=1360377583
MLA 9
“2002 Iraqi presidential referendum.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 21 June 2026, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2002_Iraqi_presidential_referendum&oldid=1360377583.
Chicago (note)
Wikipedia, “2002 Iraqi presidential referendum,” last modified June 21, 2026, 03:14 (UTC), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2002_Iraqi_presidential_referendum&oldid=1360377583.
Chicago (shortened note)
Wikipedia, “2002 Iraqi presidential referendum.”
Chicago cites well-known reference works such as Wikipedia in notes only, not in the bibliography.
This event on Middle East, 1900–present: https://middleeast.events/event/2002-iraqi-presidential-referendum
If you use the map’s borders: CShapes 2.0 - historical country borders. Schvitz, G., et al. (2022). CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. https://icr.ethz.ch/data/cshapes/ (modified by middleeast.events); West Bank Areas A/B/C: UN OCHA / HDX "Oslo Agreement" Areas A/B/C (West Bank). Distributed under the legacy HumanitarianResponse.info terms: non-commercial use with credit to UN OCHA. https://data.humdata.org/dataset/state-of-palestine-other-0-0-0-0-0; some corrected border points: GeoNames - CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). https://www.geonames.org/
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Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by Wikipedia contributors, from the article 2002 Iraqi presidential referendum. Classes are Wikidata’s labels (CC0).