The main reasons why Iraqis would vote out of fear, is because everyone who voted had their hands marked with an indelible ink that won't wash off for a couple days.

So imagine you live in Sadr City in Baghdad. You have business in the City Centre today, and so leave Sadr City to go towards the Green Zone to take care of your business. You did not vote, because of threats and intimidation from the insurgents in your neighborhood, despite the fatwa from al Sistani.

You of course are stopped by US occupation forces on your way to the City Centre, to have your papers checked, etc. The soldier sees you don't have the election mark on your hands, asks you to step over to the side. Upon examination of your papers, he sees you are from Sadr City. He is immediately suspicious of you because your address is in Sadr City, and because you obviously haven't voted. The soldier immediately suspects you are associated with the insurgency, and has you arrested on the spot.

You are taken to a jail on the outskirts of the city, but no one in your family knows this.

Does that help any of you understand why this might matter to an Iraqi?

In El Salvador, the citizens were required by law to vote in the sham elections. If they didn't have the proper party stamp proving they had voted for the leaders of the death squads running for office on their identity papers, the death squads would kill them on the spot.
At the polling place where you voted in El Salvador, the "election officials" made you put your paper ballot into a see through box, so they could see how you voted, and tell the death squads if you voted wrong. Not exactly a secret ballot, like we expect in a proper democracy!

In the El Salvador elections, there were also many members of the death squads working as election officials, so many people who "voted wrong" (ie not for the party of the repressive regime, but the reform parties) were identified, and later murdered.

So who were the election officials in Iraq?

Now, it isn't