The US embassy in Iraq has urged all US personnel to limit their travel around polling day.
“During this period, the potential for increased violence remains extremely high,” the embassy said in a public announcement.
“The Department of State continues to strongly warn US citizens against travel to Iraq and remains concerned about the continued threat of terrorist attacks against US citizens and interests in Iraq.”
Expats vote
Amid hopes and fears for their country's future, Iraqis living in the United States cast ballots Tuesday in the parliamentary elections.
The election is expected to set the course for Iraq's first permanent government since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Iraqi expatriate Talib al Bedany waved his purple finger in the air as he danced in the snow with his friends to celebrate casting his first ballot, with an ink-stained finger, in an Iraqi election.
He left Nebraska on Monday with about 150 ex-patriots who rode for nine hours to the nearest polling station in a suburb of Chicago.
Some of the men on the bus lost their jobs because they took two days off to make the 1,600 kilometre (1,000 mile) return journey, he said.
Al Bedany, who fled Basra, Iraq in 1994, skipped two exams and had to borrow money from his brother to pay for the trip.
"We're doing it for the future of our country. For the future of our kids," he said, explaining that he hopes to go back to Iraq to join in the rebuilding efforts when he finishes his bachelor degree in computer science.
Head start
Iraqis in the United States and 14 other countries around the world got a head start on the elections for the 275-member Iraqi parliament, voting two days before polls open in Iraq.
Voting places have been set up in seven cities around the United States -- Chicago, Detroit, Nashville, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Washington DC -- for the estimated 240,000 eligible Iraqi voters living here.
They will choose from some 7,000 candidates from 228 political groups, marking paper ballots that will be counted at polling stations here before being forwarded to the overseas heaquarters of the Iraqi electoral council in Amman, Jordan.
The country's first permanent Iraqi government since the March 2003 US-led invasion will be formed by the new parliament, setting a political course for the next four years.
"I am absolutely happy," Ayad Alsaidi told AFP, in a festive mood after voting at a hotel in a Virginia suburb of Washington DC. "I only say, 'Thank you, thank you, I'm happy.'"
First voter
The first voter to cast his ballot in Virginia was a Kurd, Seqi Barzani, a 30-year-old computer science expert at the University of Maryland who voted for Kurdish candidates.
"As a Kurd, I believe in a Kurdish state," he said. "We don't really have any other alternative at this point so we have no other choice but to participate in this process.
"And technically this is going to help establish federalism for the Kurdish people and give them some type of autonomy."
Baqi Barzani, 33, another Kurd from the same clan, said drafting a constitution and holding elections were steps forward.
"But the main thing which is peace and stability, has not been given the Iraqi people yet," he said.
"The best way for the US, the best method to implement a functioning
democracy is to partition Iraq along sectarian and ethnic lines," he said.
"That's the final solution to the ongoing chaos in Iraq at present."