WUSA reported last week that Iraqi citizens living on the East Coast will have a chance to register and vote in their motherland’s elections (taking place at the end of this week) at the Ramada Inn in New Carrollton. To register, prospective voters must prove Iraqi citizenship and show that they were born before Dec. 31, 1986. At first, the suburban location of the center seems slightly illogical; however, the hotel’s proximity to New Carrollton’s Amtrak services and relative distance from central D.C. seem to satisfy both convenience and safety concerns. The location is one of five in the United States, the others located in Nashville, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles.

The United States is one of 14 nations to offer this service to non-resident Iraqis, many who fled their homeland after the rise of Saddam Hussein, his increasingly autocratic government, and the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. The BBC estimates that more than 1 million non-resident Iraqis will vote in the upcoming election, a preliminary exercise which will elect a Transitional National Assembly. The transitional government will be tasked with drafting a constitution by August; the goal is to have a government in place by the end of the year.