Afghan Election Officials Disqualify Nearly a Quarter of Votes

The Afghan Electoral Body said it has thrown out about 1.3 million ballots or almost 25 percent of the 5.6 million ballots cast Sept. 18, according to media reports.

This election is the fourth since the fall of Taliban rule in 2001. Last year’s provincial and presidential elections were also accompanied by widespread violence, poor security, and allegations of serious corruption that caused about 1.5 million votes, most of which were cast for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, to be thrown out.

The announcement corroborates earlier reports of fraud and multiple irregularities made by elections observers.

There were reports that the indelible ink, which was designed to leave a stain for at least 72 hours, that people were required to dip their fingers into after voting was not indelible and easily washed off. Government officials were reported to have interfered in the voting process to sway the results in favor of their chosen candidates. ,

“The polling centers in our province were a voter exchange market,” said one voter in eastern Nangarhar Province, quoted by the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN), an independent research organization based in Berlin and funded by the Swedish and Norwegian governments.

“People who had money were buying voter cards in the polling center,” the voter also said.

Earlier the Electoral Complaints Commission said it had registered about 4,300 serious complaints, which could disqualify some of the 2,500 candidates vying for 249 seats in the Wolesi Jirga, the Lower House of Parliament.

One independent observer reported that when a man tried to photograph a polling station where officials were telling people how to vote, he was threatened and told not to report it.

“I told him that he should file a complaint anyway, but he said that he was happy that he had only been threatened and not been beaten,’ said the observer, according to AAN.

“He said he feared that if he complained he might get killed. But I am still trying to persuade him,” the observer said.

The election campaign and the voting took place amid threats, harassment, kidnapping, assault, and killed by the Taliban, which said it would attack those participating in the elections, threatening to cut off ink stained fingers.

A series of rocket attacks, roadside bombs, and sporadic gunfire on the weekend of the elections kept voter turnout low with 4.3 million estimated.

At least four parliamentary candidates and some staff were killed mostly by insurgents, and other candidates and their staff were threatened, assaulted, and kidnapped, according to the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan.

It is not clear how eliminated votes will impact the final results, which are expected to be announced at the end of the month or early November.