Afghanistan rescinds bad votes in Sept. election

KABUL, Afghanistan – Electoral officials sifting through thousands of complaints of vote fraud in last month’s parliamentary elections said Monday that ballots from about one-tenth of Afghanistan’s voting centers had been tossed out, with more disqualifications likely.

The release of preliminary results, now due Wednesday, has been delayed twice as authorities scrutinize a welter of allegations including ballot box stuffing and vote buying, as well as armed intimidation of voters.

It is not yet clear whether the scale of fraud in September’s vote will be found to be as serious as that in last year’s presidential election, when about one-third of the ballots cast for President Hamid Karzai were thrown out.

Karzai ultimately prevailed after his main rival dropped out of a runoff, but the tainted vote set the tone for a tempestuous second term in office, marked by widening public discontent with his administration and quarrels with his Western backers.

A spokesman for the Independent Election Commission, the government body that oversaw the vote, said results from 571 polling centers – out of more than 5,500 that operated on election day – had been invalidated. That recalibration does not necessarily translate into a corresponding percentage of the vote, because the centers vary in size.

Because the final result will not be released until all those complaints have been adjudicated, the preliminary figures expected Wednesday may not provide much of a clue as to whether the new parliament will be inclined to challenge Karzai’s policies.

Allies of the president had been considered likely to continue dominating the 249-seat lower house of parliament, but those loyal to Abdullah Abdullah, his main challenger in the presidential race, will likely make up a substantial minority.

Clouded election results likely would heat up the continuing rivalry between the two and perhaps deepen ethnic rifts that already are a hallmark of Afghan politics. Infighting over the results also could stoke tensions among regions’ warlord-style powerbrokers.

Many of the invalidated votes were cast in provinces where significant fighting is taking place between Western forces and insurgents, including Kunar and Paktia provinces near the eastern border with Pakistan and Kandahar province in the south.