Matt Houston, Associated Press
	Iraqi Kurds Kazim Warmzyary, left, and Goran Rahim, right, hold a Kurdish flag as they celebrate after casting their absentee ballots for the Iraq election yesterday in New Carrolton, Md.

NEW CARROLLTON, Md. -- Tens of thousands of jubilant Iraqi expatriates in 14 countries yesterday traveled hundreds of miles and submitted to lengthy security checks to cast their ballots in Iraq's first independent elections in more than 50 years.

Voting inside Iraq will be held tomorrow under extraordinarily tight security conditions. But more than 280,000 Iraqi expatriates -- including 26,000 in the United States -- have registered to vote elsewhere over a three-day period that started yesterday. Iraqis will choose a 275-member national assembly and interim government charged with drafting a new constitution.

Overseas polling places ranged from a furniture warehouse in Australia to an air-conditioned tent in the United Arab Emirates to a mosque in downtown Tehran, Iran. In the United States, five polling places were made available: in Chicago; Los Angeles; Nashville, Tenn.; Southgate, Mich., and New Carrollton, Md., a working-class suburb of Washington, D.C.

Vahid Salemi, Associated Press
An Iraqi election official, finds the name of voters, during their country's elections at a polling station in the Iranian city of Qom 80 miles southwest of the Iranian capital Tehran yesterday. Iraqi expatriates are permitted to cast ballots in 14 countries across the world, including the United States, but the voting in Iran holds special significance.

Iraqi voters broke into song as they cast ballots in London, and the first to arrive at the cavernous Ramada conference center in Maryland were applauded by the elections staff. "It feels more like a celebration than an election,'' said Shihab Shamma, a biomedical engineering professor at the University of Maryland. "I have voted in U.S. elections, but this is different. This is from the heart."

Shamma, 50, emigrated to the United States 30 years ago after growing up in Baghdad. To him, the election is long overdue, and his family changed vacation plans so that he could cast a ballot yesterday.

A number of Kurdish Iraqis wore traditional garb -- men in one-piece woven suits with pantaloon legs and cumberbunds, and women in brilliantly colored long dresses and head scarves.

"This is a big deal!" said Jamal Saleh of Laurel, Md. "This is what we wear for a feast."

In the parking lot across the street, Kazim Narmzyary, 24, of Fairfax, Va., got ready to party. With Kurdish music blaring from speakers on top of his car, Narmzyary danced joyously, waving a silken Iraqi flag.

Despite the bitter cold, Narmzyary said he planned to spend much of the weekend in the parking lot, celebrating with friends who were traveling from Boston, Philadelphia and Harrisburg to vote.

Such dedication to Iraq's democratic experiment was not universal.

Worldwide, only one-quarter of the 1.2 million eligible expatriate Iraqis had registered to vote by Tuesday's deadline. And the United States, turnout will be even lower: just 11 percent of eligible Iraqis -- 25,946 of 234,000 -- had registered, according to the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration, which organized the vote.

Some Iraqi expatriates said the long distances people were forced to travel twice -- once to register and once to vote -- was affecting turnout.

For many, no obstacle was too great to overcome.

"It's the least we can do," said Abbass Alkhafaji, a business professor at Slippery Rock University who lives in New Castle, Pa., and plans to travel this weekend with his wife and their four young children to the polling place in Michigan.

	Bassem Tellawi, Associated Press
	An Iraqi election official explains to a voter how to cast his ballot at a voting station in Damascus, Syria yesterday. More than 200,000 Iraqis are living in Syria and around 16,581 of them have registered to vote. In the backgrouind, a picture of the late Syrian President Hafez Assad.

"In Iraq, people are subjected to violence, to killing. Here, we just have to drive five hours on nice roads on a weekend," he said.

Tanya Gilly of Germantown, Md., arrived at the Ramada in New Carrollton shaking from excitement. Her husband, Dara Khailany, said the election was a peaceful way to avenge the torture and killings that he and other Kurds had endured for years in Iraq under Sunni-dominated governments like Saddam Hussein's.

"It was a nightmare,'' said Khailany, who left Iraq in 1992. "Imagine walking out of your home in the morning and not knowing when or if you would be back. That's what we lived with."

A number of voters brought their children. Omir Kareem traveled from Newark, N.J., to New Carrollton with his three young sons. Salam Majeed, a councilman from Green Lane, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia, arrived to vote with his two teenage sons in tow.

"We came here for them. We came here for their future," said Majeed.

Many of the Iraqi expatriates have relatives in Iraq and invariably say their family members are determined to vote tomorrow, as well, despite the threat of violence.

Majeed said, "I have an 82-year-old relative [in Baghdad] who told me, 'I hear that they are killing people who go to vote. Well, get my coffin ready because I'm going to vote.' "