Afghan election recount
Robert Carfang
Issue date: 10/12/09 Section: Two Cents
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However, the United Nations-backed election commission ordered the recount of 10 percent of Afghanistan's polling stations, according to The New York Times. This was because the election commission suspected voting fraud in the election. Ballots from more than 2,500 of the approximately 26,300 polling sites in the Aug. 20 election need to be recounted.
Even international and Afghan election observers had claimed that there was massive fraud in the elections. "Afghan election officials would comply but declined to estimate how long the recounts would take" said Noor Mohammad Noor, a spokesman for the election commission, according to the Huffington Post.
The top American Official of the U.N election commission, Peter Galbraith, left Afghanistan after an argument with his boss, Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide. Both of them disagreed about how to deal with the voting fraud.
The Huffington Post reported that Galbraith said "the Independent Election Commission had voted 6-1 for a formula to root out corrupt ballots, only to reverse itself the next day claiming it had no legal way to enforce those standards."
Western officials have a fear that the voting fraud and the drawn out process will undermine efforts to stabilize the country. They think that this will diminish the Afghan government's standing among Afghanistan citizens and will undermine support for troop increases in both the United States and Europe. In those countries, disapproval of the war is continuing.
Western officials are not sure what to do in this situation. Many of them are loyal to Karzai. His presidential opposition stated that Karzai's total ballot count will decrease to serval points below 50 percent after fraduant votes will be taking out. However Karzai's campaign spokesman stated "Mr.
Karzai would still have more than 50 percent of the vote after fraudulent ballots are discarded," the New York Times reported.
As of right now he may be facing an run off. The New York Times also reported that the longer the process of trying to deal with voting fraud goose on, the likelihood that the Afghanistan's will view the government as illegitimate will be increased. Right now, the current Afghanistan government is viewed as weak, corrupt, and incompetent. Officials state that they need to recount and audit the votes within the next four to six weeks or else it will be too late to carry another election until spring.
"I think Afghanistan needs more stability and security. I think democracy relies on an educated public which requires a strong infrastructure," said Pat Brown, a third year Depaul student.
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