An amended Iraqi election law, without which elections will not take place on schedule, did pass the Iraqi Parliament today, but only after Sunni Parliamentarians boycotted the vote. Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Arab Iraqi Vice-President with veto power over the bill, will almost certainly boycott the amended law.

We’re nearly two months from the expected date of the election, seen as key to US pullouts of military forces, and there remains no settled law on how votes will be allocated. Hillary Clinton has started to admit that the date is unrealistic:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is holding out the possibility that Iraq’s national election could be delayed beyond January because of a dispute over the allocation of seats in parliament.

Clinton told reporters at the State Department Monday that U.S. officials are involved in trying to help Iraqi politicians sort out their differences over an elections law that must pass before the vote can be held.

The election is supposed to be conducted in January. Clinton mentioned no specific dates but said the election “might slip” as a result of the continuing dispute over the elections law. She expressed confidence that the voting eventually will be held.

If the election slips, and the date gets delayed and delayed (even though the national Constitution requires an election by the end of January), the troop withdrawals may get pushed back as well. And given the shortage of available troops for any escalation in Afghanistan, it’s worth considering how one affects the other. And if an escalation cannot get phased in for months or even years due to holdups in Iraq, there are additional questions over whether it’s feasible at all.

Maybe that will come up in the big White House meeting tonight.

In a related story, prior to the vote in Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has cracked down on Baathists and Sunnis in the capital, showing more of the strongman tendencies that we have seen repeatedly from him in the past year. Needless to say, the upcoming elections, if and when they happen, do not equal democracy in Iraq.