Mauritanians come to Lockland to escape persecution, but still cast ballots for change back home

Ibrahim Guisset stands in the parking lot of a low-slung, nondescript mosque in Roselawn on June 29, the day of Mauritania's presidential elections.

Around him, hundreds filter in and out of the building. Cars idle, women and men in colorful traditional attire or jeans and t-shirts come and go; political conversations buzz.

The Roselawn mosque is serving as a polling location for Mauritanians to cast a kind of absentee ballot. About 29,000 members of the diaspora will do so — a small portion of the 2 million votes cast in the election.