GENEVA -- Nearly 94 percent of registered Iraqi voters living abroad cast absentee ballots in Iraq's election, international organizers said Monday.

The International Organization for Migration said it was counting votes in each of the 14 countries that hosted three days of out-of-country polling. Results will be announced publicly in Baghdad.

Although participation of registered voters was high, the number of expatriate Iraqis who registered in a special nine-day campaign represented only 23 percent of the estimated 1.2 million eligible.

The low registration figure was attributed partly to fears of violence and retribution from insurgents but also the fact that not all countries with large numbers of Iraqis, including Egypt, participated and many voters had to travel abroad to register and then again to vote.

Peter Erben, who directed the project for the Geneva-based IOM, noted that many expatriate Iraqis had turned out to vote in traditional dress and were dancing in the streets. The agency marked every voter's index finger with ink to prevent repeat voting.

"Many, many people (were) proudly holding up their inked finger as a sign of their freedom to choose their future leaders," Erben said.

"I have worked on many post-conflict out-of-country elections, but this is honestly the first time I have seen this level of emotion and excitement among voters," said Erben, who recently coordinated absentee voting for the Afghanistan election.

The agency said 265,148 Iraqi expatriate voters cast their ballots in special polls from Friday through Sunday. That was 93.6 percent of the 283,341 Iraqis outside the country who had registered, including 3,038 Iraqi police cadets training in Jordan, IOM said.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy, spokesman for the Geneva headquarters of the agency, said the only disruption he had heard of was a protest in Australia, where voting hours were extended in one polling center after a brawl and a bomb scare halted voting for an hour.

The 14 countries chosen to host the vote were selected because they have the largest concentrations of Iraqis, IOM said. Iraqis living in other countries were allowed to register and vote in any of the 14 countries.

Countries hosting the vote were Australia, the United States, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Jordan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Syria, Turkey and United Arab Emirates. Those countries chosen to host the project because they are where the largest concentrations of Iraqis were believed to be living, according to the IOM.