"Turnout was absolute and the yes vote was absolute," the regime's number two Ezzat Ibrahim said.
"The people are voting unanimously for their leader," he told state television as the 1,905 voting centres closed around the country.
Ibrahim, head of the committee supervising the referendum, said the poll was "a unique experience in the world which foreigners cannot explain."
Non-Iraqis "cannot understand how a people, all of them, can vote unanimously for their leader," said Ibrahim, vice chairman of the Revolution Command Council.
"The democratic experience in Iraq is different from all others. It does not exist either in America or Vietnam to take as examples two countries with antagonistic political systems," he said.
In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer dismissed the presidential referendum.
"Not a very serious vote," Fleischer said. "No one places any credibility on it."
The president garnered 99.96 percent of the vote in the country's first referendum in 1995. Just 3,052 no votes were registered out of a total of more than eight million.
The ruling Baath Party had targeted a 100 percent "yes" vote this time for Saddam and created a party mood in defiance of US plans to topple the regime.
"By voting I've fired my gun at the head of Bush and his gang," said 67-year-old Abdul Majid Janabi, referring to the US president.
Counting the votes
He like many others had queued since dawn at voting centre number 13 in Baghdad's second constituency.
Everyone declared they would vote for Saddam and one ballot box even had his photo stuck on it.
Any noes?
"It's a yes vote. If you want to say no, you stay home," one young man told AFP at a centre in Saddam City, a poor Shiite area where a US flag had been laid out in front of the boxes, obliging voters to trample it.
A young woman voted with her blood after filling a syringe from her arm.
Others followed her example, chanting: "With our soul, with our blood we will sacrifice ourselves for you, Saddam."
In the northern city of Tikrit, near where Saddam was born 65 years ago, people pricked their fingers to vote in blood.
Voter after voter did the same at the village of Alem, just to the north, where a full-scale party was under way, an AFP reporter saw.
Blood votes are counted apart to allow the authorities to "compensate" the people, said a returning officer.
"We are here to say yes to Saddam but above all to send a huge no to George W. Bush," said 26-year-old Iman Faraj in Tikrit, urging the message to be spread around the world.
The vote was officially secret but no one seemed bothered to go into the curtained booths, preferring to vote in open public areas.
Although Tuesday was not a holiday, a party atmosphere engulfed the capital as it did Tikrit.
Singing and dancing was encouraged across the country, coffee was served, and state television broadcast popular music all day long, spliced with interviews and scenes from the polling stations.
Some voters paraded round holding up the voting slips showing the "Naam" or "Yes" for Saddam.
At a polling centre in the modest Salihiya quarter of Baghdad, local Baath Party official Talal Ismael pointed to three private booths in the corner and said proudly: "No one has used them in three hours.
"The people are solidly behind their president as you can see."
Saddam even managed to telephone all Iraqis on Tuesday as they went to vote.
Anyone picking up their telephone found the dialling tone had been replaced by the "Naam, naam Saddam" campaign slogan, followed by "All Iraq sings: 'Saddam is the pride of my country'".
The Iraqi Communication and Post Co. introduced the new dialling tone on Monday. It was due to return to normal after the festivities.
Voting centres shut at 8:00 pm (1700 GMT), 12 hours after they opened for the 11.5 million Iraqis eligible to vote in 15 provinces.
State television showed the start of counting in Baghdad to loud cheers from spectators.
Official results were expected during the night for the referendum in which Saddam was the sole candidate.
An Iraqi official shows a "yes" marked with blood on a ballot at a polling station in Baghdad's Saddam City neighborhood, as Iraqis voted in a referendum for which Iraq's 65-year-old President Saddam Hussein is the sole candidate for seven more years in office
© AFP Patrick Baz
