[6] On 10 June 2018, a storage site in Baghdad housing roughly half of the ballots from the May parliamentary election caught fire.

This election would be the last held under the Webster/Sainte-Laguë method of proportional representation, as electoral reforms passed in 2019 amid the 2019–2021 Iraqi protests created a district-based system, and sought to have representatives represent more local voices (as opposed to the entire governorate they were previously elected from), reduce deadlocks resulting from inconclusive coalition talks, as well as stop infighting amongst list members and a myriad of small lists from siphoning off votes and failing to meet the electoral threshold.

[8] The elections were originally scheduled for September 2017, but were delayed by six months due to the civil war with the Islamic State which ended in December 2017 with the recapture of their remaining territories.

The largest Sunni Arab majority coalition, the Muttahidoon (Uniters for Reform), called for a further six month's delay to allow displaced voters to return to their homes.

[11] Members of the Council of Representatives are elected through the open list form of party-list proportional representation, using the 18 governorates of Iraq as the constituencies.

[14][15] However, the Council of Representatives voted on 11 February 2018, to add an extra seat for minorities, in the Wasit Governorate for Feyli Kurds, making the total number of parliamentarians equal to 329.

[citation needed] In January, the Supreme Court ruled that the representation for Yazidis should be increased, although it is unclear whether this change will be implemented in time for these elections.

[29] Leading members of the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization Forces), mainly Shiite Arab militias who fought alongside the Iraqi army to defeat Daesh from 2014 to 2017, formed an alliance to contest the election.

The Badr Organisation, headed by Hadi Al-Amiri, which had 22 seats, was previously part of the ruling State of Law Coalition from which it announced its withdrawal in December 2017.

[30][31] The Fatah Alliance agreed to run jointly with al-Abadi's Nasr al-Iraq (Victory of Iraq) list, but the agreement fell apart after only 24 hours, reportedly over Abadi's conditions.

[32][33] Ammar al-Hakim, the leader of the Citizen Alliance, the third largest bloc in parliament, announced in July 2017 that he was leaving the veteran Shiite Islamist party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq -– which he had led since the death of his father, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim –- and forming a new "non-Islamic national movement" called the National Wisdom Movement (al-Hikma).

In September 2017, Barham Salih, a former prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan and deputy leader of the PUK, announced that he was leaving the party and forming a new opposition party—the Coalition for Democracy and Justice.

[39] Within the Sunni Arab parties, the main Uniters for Reform Coalition (Muttahidoon), led by Osama al-Nujaifi, which won 23 seats in 2014, is running again, although the Iraqi Islamic Party, led by Speaker of Parliament Salim Jabouri, has left this coalition to join up with former prime minister Ayad Allawi's Al-Wataniya and Salah al-Mutlak's Al-Arabiya.

In a ruling on 21 June, the court upheld the full manual recount but struck down the cancellation of internally-displaced and overseas voters.

[55] On 8 June 2018, a formal agreement was signed by the leaders of the Alliance towards Reforms (Saairun) and the National Coalition (Wataniya) to become the largest bloc in the Council of Representatives.

[55] Parliament convened on 3 September, but were unable to elect a speaker due to rivalries between two blocs who both claimed to be the largest coalition, entitled to nominate the prime minister.

[78] At the same time, violent protests occurred in Basra and other cities in the south over polluted water—which had hospitalised tens of thousands of people—and the lack of reliable electricity.

He immediately nominated independent Shi'ite Adil Abdul-Mahdi, a former oil minister seen as acceptable to all parties and to both Iran and the United States, as prime minister-designate.