Afghan and international election observers on Tuesday raised concerns about the manner in which votes were being ruled invalid and discarded by election officials, also noting the drop off in monitoring discretion they have been afforded since polls closed on April 5.
At a gathering held in Kabul, representatives of Democracy International (DI) explained their qualms with the methods used by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) and Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) for vote counting and complaints investigations.
DI Executive Director Zekirya Barakzai spoke at the event on Tuesday, and emphasized that invalidating the votes solely based on assessments of result sheets was contrary to the national election laws.
“Looking at a result sheet form and issuing a decision is in contradiction to the election law, and some votes have already been invalidated,” Barakzai said. “If we study the election law accurately, the election commission is allowed to invalidate votes when the investigations have been completed and not just by looking at a form.”
Democracy International initially assigned at least 500 observers to monitor the election process, though many left the country in the lead up to the vote in early April due to a wave of Taliban violence.
According to election officials, all result sheets will be invalidated that do not contain signatures from observers or proper IEC stamping.
IEC Deputy Chair Abdul Rahman Hotaki on Tuesday maintained that all efforts made by the commissions have been legal and transparent. He said that the result sheet invalidations were based on a decision made by the IEC.
“The Chairman of the commission decided to invalidate some of the ballot papers that were without signatures or stamps.”
But Afghan civil society groups for the last week have complained about not being allowed to observe key stages in the vote counting and complaint investigation processes.
Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA) head Naeem Ayoubzada has said that the ECC invalidates the votes of hundred polling centers hastily and all in the absence of observers.
Despite having been overwhelmingly positive about the way Election Day went earlier in April, Afghan observers have become the hardest critics of the national election commissions and their handling of the not insignificant amount of fraud that appears to have taken place.
According to the IEC, 1,486 sites have been investigated, and votes from 606 suspicious sites have been recounted as well as those where more than 600 ballots were used.
The election commission said that it intends to announce another partial results before the preliminary results are to be released. Preliminary results were originally scheduled to go public by April 24, but with the workload election officials face, that date could be pushed back.
Tolonews
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