Stacking the deck

For the past nine months, Iraq's interim legislature has been working on a constitution. The final product of their labours goes to the people in 12 days time for ratification. Unfortunately, there's a small chance that the Sunni minority, who are not happy with various aspects of the document, will be able to scrape together enough votes to kill it. So what does the interim government do? Change the rules, of course! Iraq's Transitional Administrative Law states that (Article 61 (C)):

The general referendum will be successful and the draft constitution ratified if a majority of the voters in Iraq approve and if two-thirds of the voters in three or more governorates do not reject it.

The interim government has now declared that that two-thirds majority will be calculated on the basis of registered (rather than actual) voters. Given that turnout in the January elections was less than 60%, and violence is even more likely to keep people away from the polls this time, this makes the constitution almost impossible to reject.

Of course, if the rule were applied consistently, it would make it almost impossible to accept as well. So the interim government has decided to apply it inconsistently: while rejection will be based on registered voters, acceptance will be based on actual voters. It's a blatant jack-up - but entirely legal. Two-thirds of Iraq's interim representatives voted to stack the deck in this fashion and make their constitutional "referendum" as much of a foregone conclusion as Saddam's joke "election". But I guess like their former dictator, they need at least the pretense of popular ratification...