DID ABC NEWS GET AN IRAQI VOTER KILLED? A reader asks that very question, and sends this from an ABC story:

However, we did find one man who voted “no.” We followed him outside to ask why. “You are mistaken, I voted ‘yes’ for our great leader Saddam Hussein,” he told the government minder who is our translator.

Did he lie to use? Was he scared of the minder? Did he mistakenly vote “no?” We’ll never know. But he was the nearest thing to a dissenting voice that we found in Kerbala; a city that rebelled against Saddam in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War.

That rebellion was brutally crushed and, if appearances are to be believed, none of its spirit remains.

But why did our dissenting voter’s ballot not show up in the tally announced this morning? The 100 percent result was not 99.9 recurring that was rounded up for ease. Iraq claims that every single person eligible to vote voted for Saddam.

I’d be interested in a followup. . . .