First Ballots Invalidated in Afghan Presidential Vote

Finding “clear and convincing evidence of fraud”, Afghanistan’s election monitoring body for the first time ordered the invalidation of ballots in the last month’s contentious presidential elections.

The August 20 presidential vote of Afghanistan was marred by low voters turnout and widespread allegations of vote-rigging, intimidation and other fraud.

“In the course of its investigations, the ECC (Electoral Complaints Commission) has found clear and convincing evidence of fraud” in 32 polling stations in two southeastern provinces, the ECC said in a statement.

The ECC said that the votes from these booths would now be excluded from the final vote, which, on counting of all ballots, seems set to return incumbent President Hamid Karzai for a second term.

The election monitoring body said that all presidential ballots in five polling booths in Paktika were invalidated, citing indications from the stations “that the ballots were not legally cast, or were not legally counted”.

In 27 polling stations in Ghazni, either all the presidential ballots, all the provincial council ballots – or in some cases both – were thrown out.

There are 600-700 presidential ballot papers and the same number of ballots for provincial elections at each of Afghanistan’s 25,450 polling stations, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has said.