Nashville, Tenn. ? Abdul al-Najr woke up early Saturday with his wife, piled into a car with three friends and drove 250 miles from St. Louis to the polling place here, where jubilant Iraqis danced and held hands in the steady, cold rain.

“I’m so happy because I’m human,” al-Najr, 38, said after casting a ballot for the first time in his life. “I get to say I’m human now.”

Iraqi immigrants Mona Oshana, left, and Nadia Khoshaba, both of Phoenix, Ariz., share a hug after casting their votes in Iraq's election at the former El Toro Marine Base in Irvine, Calif. The Independent Iraqi Electoral Commission is allowing Iraqi immigrants living in 14 countries to vote by absentee ballot. Overseas voting continues today, which is Election Day in Iraq itself. At right is Jacklin Mushi.

On the second day of voting for Iraqi expatriates, people drove hundreds of miles to reach the five U.S. cities with polling places: Nashville, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington. More than 5,000 Iraqis voted Friday, and organizers expected larger crowds over the weekend.

In Nashville, which has the largest Kurdish community in the nation, about 20 Kurds celebrated by dancing and waving flags in the rain. The men and women broke into a line dance called the badine with traditional music blaring from a car’s speakers.

Children waved flags to signify Kurdistan, while several teenage boys wore Iraqi soccer jerseys and had their faces painted like the national flag.

“It is celebration because for the first time they taste the freedom of this country,” said George Khamou, of Little Rock, Ark., who watched the dancers. “This is really a big celebration for all of us here — the Kurdish, the Arabs, the Christians, everybody.

“All we say now is all of us are Iraqis, because we are all the same.”

Voters had their right index finger dipped in ink as a safeguard against voting fraud, then dropped paper ballots into boxes.

“They’re thrilled to have the ink on their finger as a badge that they voted,” said Kathleen Houlihan, the Chicago spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration, which is helping coordinate the vote. “It’s history in the making.”

Nearly 26,000 people have registered to vote in the United States.

Turnout was steady in Irvine, Calif., where voters clapped and cheered as fellow expatriates completed their paper ballots.

“I never thought I could put the words together, Iraq and vote,” said Mona Oshana, 36, who has lived in Phoenix since she was a child. “We have left (Iraq), but we have not forgotten them.”