Early reports have the Iraqi constitution passing, as ballots come in from this weekend's vote (below). It would be a crucial step forward. And Washington state reservists are in the thick of it, as the Tacoma News Tribune reports today (free reg. req.):

Sgt. 1st Class Patrick McDonald....44, is a senior aide to Secretary of State Sam Reed. An Army reservist for 14 years, he has worked on elections and governance issues in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. Since May, he's been in Iraq, where several hundred Fort Lewis-based soldiers - including military police, combat engineers, medics, transportation specialists and others - are serving or on their way. McDonald said he works on the election team in the U.S. civil-military operations center in Baghdad's Green Zone. In an interview Friday he (said)...."Basically it's been election, election, election since I got here....That will continue. Even if they defeat the constitution they'll have to elect a new body to write another one."

The team advises the Independent Election Commission of Iraq, which has hired some 250,000 poll workers to conduct today’s balloting, McDonald said. "Insurgents are targeting the polling sites, but people are willing to go," McDonald said. "They say, 'it's God's will if something happens to me.'" Voters must turn up at polling places in the provinces where they live. This presented a problem for Iraq's security forces, many deployed far from home. McDonald said he passed along a suggestion: provisional ballots. They were a source of controversy in the Washington governor’s race, but Iraqi elections officials adopted the idea.

As we know all too well here in Washington state, voting is supposed to be an earned privilege, not a right to be tossed around like candy to parade spectators. But can you imagine having to worry about dodging bullets and bombs on the way to a polling place? Unreal. I tip my hat to the U.S. forces in Iraq and Washington state reservists including Sgt. McDonald, who have risked (and sometimes lost) life and limb in this strategically vital effort to engage Al Qaeda on the battlefield, and help Iraqis achieve what a majority of them want: a society based on principles of liberty and representative democracy, as opposed to Saddam's vicious thug-ocracy.