Challenge to Election Results is Subsiding in Afghanistan

Afghanistan's democratization process has cleared two major hurdles. First, the country managed to avoid serious violence on election day, as millions of Afghans turned out to vote for the country's first popularly elected president. Now, a ballot dispute is subsiding, reducing a threat that could have undermined the legitimacy of the vote.

Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai appears poised to secure a popular mandate from the October 9 election. Ballot counting has not formally begun, and will not commence until October 13 at the earliest. Tallying all the votes could take weeks, and preliminary figures should take at least several days to compile. Yet, according to an exit poll, Karzai has secured more than 50 percent of the ballots cast, thereby eliminating the need for a run-off between the top two vote-getters. The poll was conducted by the International Republican Institute, an organization with close connections with the Republican Party in the United States, utilizing financial support provided by the US Agency for International Development.

Initially, Karzai's 15 presidential opponents challenged the integrity of the vote, alleging widespread irregularities, especially multiple voting by individuals. International officials did not share that view, downplaying irregularities while emphasizing the high voter turnout. Officials announced over 10 million Afghans had registered to vote. Precise figures on turnout were not immediately available, but by all accounts it was high.

"The impressive voter turnout and the discipline and dedication of the polling staff ... are a clear manifestation of the will of the Afghan people to freely control their own destinies," Francesc Vendrell, the European Union's special representative to Afghanistan, said in a written statement.

Those charged with monitoring the elections and the ballot-counting process announced that a commission would investigate the fraud allegations. After intensive negotiations with international community representatives, many of the presidential candidates -- including Yunus Qanooni, Karzai's most prominent rival – said they would accept the election results after the special commission had completed its inquiry. [See related EurasiaNet story].

In the weeks leading up to the election, officials worried about Islamic radical efforts to disrupt the voting. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. While suspected Taliban militants carried out numerous attacks during the presidential campaign's last days, election day itself proved relatively quiet.

"All over the country, people braved attacks by terrorists and went to the election," Karzai said during an October 11 interview with the US television network NBC. The numbers [of voters] and the enthusiasm both were very, very great."

The controversy surrounding the election centered on the ink used to mark voters in order to prevent multiple voting. On election day, the supposedly indelible ink proved easy to wash off, thus enabling voters to potentially vote again and again.

The possibility of multiple voting emerged as a prominent issue when it was determined that a hasty voter-registration process had resulted in widespread reports of individuals obtaining numerous balloting cards.

On election day, officials responded quickly to the ink problem, re-supplying polling stations with markers that left truly indelible stains on voters' thumbs. An observer from the Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan (FEFA) told EurasiaNet that the faulty ink would not significantly influence the voting results. Multiple voting "hardly" seemed to be a problem during the vote, the observer maintained.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) agreed. Robert Barry, head of the OSCE mission to Afghanistan, acknowledged the problem with the ink, but added: "The candidates' demand to nullify the election is unjustified and would not do service to the people of Afghanistan."

The OSCE did, however, notice some problems: election officials ordering people how to vote at some precincts, voters being turned away at others because boxes were full. FEFA also acknowledged there were problems, with election officials "guiding" voters to vote for a particular candidate and campaigning being conducted within some polling stations.

FEFA had 2,300 observers employed during the vote across the country and in Pakistan. There were, however, 22,000 polling stations to monitor and the total amount of national and international observers was far below 3,000. Many organizations, including the OSCE, decided against monitoring the vote because of the unsafe conditions in the country.