Quarter of Afghan Votes Thrown Out
The AP reports:
Afghanistan has thrown out nearly a quarter of ballots cast in last month's parliamentary elections because of fraud, but it is still far from clear whether the public will accept the results as fair.
The full preliminary results from the Sept. 18 poll were released Wednesday after multiple delays as election officials struggled to weed out results from polling stations that never opened, along with bunches of ballots all cast for one candidate, or suspiciously split 50-50 between two people.
After last year's fraud-marred presidential election, the government wanted to prove to the Afghan people and international allies that it is not mired in corruption but making strides for reform.
While findings indicate that cheating was pervasive, the rulings also show election officials were doing their job this time around — by keeping fraudulent ballots out of the totals.
"They've been doing a moderately good job at detecting the fraudulent ballots and removing them. That's a positive thing," said Andy Campbell, the Afghanistan director for the National Democratic Institute, a U.S.-based election-monitoring group.
It's a major change from last year's presidential vote, when election commissioners dumped obviously fraudulent ballots into the tally to help President Hamid Karzai avoid a runoff with his top challenger. It was only after drawn-out investigations that about a million ballots were thrown out — the majority of them for Karzai.
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