independent election commission

Afghan election officials have ordered a runoff between President Hamid Karzai and his closest rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.  It is scheduled for November 7th.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai

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The announcement comes a day after the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission released its report detailing instances of fraud in the August 20th election.

International officials in Kabul have told me for weeks now that they had contingency plans in place to deal with the aftermath of the fraud investigation.

Analysts had discussed the likelihood of a runoff for some time, but in the back of everyone’s mind, there was the possibility that President Karzai would not accept the ECC’s findings.  Click here for the background why.

Now Afghanistan — a country in crisis — has a little more than two weeks to prepare for a nationwide presidential election.

Voter turnout was lower than expected in the first round, especially in the troubled south, in part because of Taliban threats to disrupt the balloting and retaliate against voters. How many people will vote this time?

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…