Afghanistan’s Political Crisis Continues

The U.N.-backed commission investigating Afghanistan’s presidential election says it found “clear and convincing evidence of fraud” in the August 20th poll.

As a result, the Electoral Complaints Commission said Monday that Afghan election officials must invalidate results at 210 polling stations.

Afghan soldiers unload election ballots (2009).

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Diplomatic sources in Kabul say they believe the findings set the stage for a second round of voting.

While the ECC listed the individual polling stations in its audit, it did not specifically break down how many votes each candidate would lose.

The U.S.-based election monitoring group, Democracy International, did its own calculations.  Its findings are not that much different from what was previously discussed.

The group said the ECC’s findings show that more than one million votes are invalid due to fraud, leaving Afghan President Hamid Karzai with about 48 percent of the vote.  According to Afghanistan’s electoral law, there must be a runoff if the leading candidate’s vote total is below 50 percent.

The fate of Afghanistan’s political crisis now rests with the country’s Independent Election Commission, which was appointed by President Karzai.

It is not clear if the commission will accept the ECC’s findings.  Mr. Karzai’s camp has criticized the ECC’s procedure for collecting the information regarding fraud.  Also, most of the fraudulent ballots are believed to benefit the Afghan president.  Stay tuned…