A Look at Fighting Voter Fraud in Afghanistan

Election officials in Afghanistan have a lot to consider about how to eliminate — or at the very least minimize — voter fraud in the country’s November 7th presidential runoff.

AndrewRT, Wikimedia Commons

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a television interview that the United Nations wants to replace more than half of the country’s 380 district election heads as one way to make the second round more credible.

But the U.N. spokesman in Afghanistan told me today that staffing is just one of the many things Afghan election officials have to consider in the coming weeks.

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Meanwhile in Pakistan, authorities closed many schools a day after two suicide bombers attacked the International Islamic University in Islamabad, killing four people at a faculty building and a women’s cafeteria.

Separately, surveillance video footage from one of last week’s attacks in Lahore made its rounds on local media channels.  The attack was on the country’s Federal Investigation Agency, which is similar to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States.

Also, Pakistani helicopter gunships attacked Taliban strongholds near the Afghan border on the fifth day of an offensive in the tribal region of South Waziristan.

Officials say troops are facing fierce resistance as they fight to gain control of Kotkai, the hometown of the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud.