Iraqis citizens can cast votes at El...

Iraqis citizens can

cast votes at El Toro

Newport-Mesa residents who are Iraqi citizens will be able to vote

in that country’s elections from Jan. 28 to Jan. 30 at the closed El

Toro Marine Corps Air Station, one of five United States polling

places for the Iraqi election, Rep. Chris Cox announced Friday.

The White House, Department of Defense and United Nations

International Organization of Migration jointly selected El Toro

because Southern California is home to about 70,000 of the 300,000

Iraqis in the United States who are eligible to vote in the election,

which is the first democratic election in Iraq’s history.

“The effort was made to choose sites that were at the center of

Iraqi population concentrations in the United States,” Cox said.

“They are being encouraged to participate in the building of

democracy [in Iraq]. Many have plans permanently to return, and they

are intensely interested in supporting the democratic process.”

More than 30,000 eligible Iraqi voters are expected to cast

ballots at El Toro.

Registration at the former Marine base will be offered from 8 a.m.

to 5 p.m. this Monday through Jan. 23. Once registered, voters can

return to El Toro to cast ballots between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. Jan. 28

to Jan. 30. For more information on voting in Iraq’s election at El

Toro, call the Iraq Out-of-Country Voting Program at (800) 916-8292

or visit https://iraqocv.org online.

Carpool connector lanes should help ease traffic

In about two weeks, changing freeways in Costa Mesa will be a

little bit easier, at least for drivers using the San Diego and Costa

Mesa freeways. The recent opening of a carpool lane connecting the

northbound San Diego Freeway to the northbound Costa Mesa Freeway

will be complemented by a corresponding southbound carpool lane,

which is expected to open by Jan. 31.

Those lanes will help reduce congestion at an interchange that is

one of the 10 busiest in the United States and is used by close to

500,000 vehicles each day, said Orange County Transportation

Authority spokesman Ted Nguyen. The transportation authority built

the carpool “flyover” lanes as part of a $125-million project to

improve the two freeways.

The project was held up during construction because of cracks in

the concrete, but the transportation authority launched a major

design and repair effort to correct it, Nguyen said. The opening of

the carpool connector lanes will mean cars don’t have to weave across

multiple lanes of traffic when entering and exiting the freeways. The

lanes are one of the last components of the 120-mile carpool system

in Orange County, Nguyen said.