Afghanistan went to the polls last Saturday, in elections for the Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of parliament. The early reports of ballot fraud are now coming in.
The Christian Science Monitor asks, are Afghanistan elections hurting democracy?
US officials are calling the Afghanistan election for parliament a success, even as fraud allegations mount.
Are Afghanistan Elections Hurting Democracy?, Christian Science Monitor
The New York Times raises the same issue:
Evidence is mounting that fraud in last weekend’s parliamentary election was so widespread that it could affect the results in a third of provinces, calling into question the credibility of a vote that was an important test of the American and Afghan effort to build a stable and legitimate government.
Widespread Fraud Seen in Latest Afghan Elections, New York Times
As does the Economist:
A vote to set democracy back
A variety of high turnout statistics have also been proffered, though they are largely meaningless in a country without a proper census, so that nobody knows how many eligible voters there are. There were, however, 4.3m ballots cast—making this the least well-attended of the four national elections of the post-Taliban era. Even then, nobody knows quite how many of those votes were cast legitimately.
...
No wonder that there is a growing sense of gloom among observers, as well as of déjà vu. As Dr Abdullah puts it, with or without a proper inquiry, "democracy is already damaged."
Afghanistan's Parliamentary Election: Not Exactly a Ringing Endorsement, Economist
An Early Report from Paktika
McClatchy cites one example of ballot box stuffing, the whole of a district in Paktika province:
One Paktika province district recorded 626 percent voter turnout, according to reports obtained by McClatchy Newspapers.
Fraud Reports Emerging in Afghan Vote, McClatchy
This report is being heavily picked up by other newspapers as an example of the election problems.
Paktika and the War
Paktika province borders on Waziristan, Pakistan. It is isolated and remote.
Paktika is also central in the war. It has a much higher concentration of heavily fortified U.S. bases than anywhere else in the country. This includes the large military base in Sharana, and a string of Special Forces bases along the border.
The insurgencies in Paktika are loosely affiliated networks of groups, including the Haqqani network.
Districts in Paktika province:
Paktika and the Previous Election
Presidential elections were held in August 2009. Ballots were distributed 600 to each polling station.
In the Barmal district of Paktika province, 16 polling stations reported exactly 600 ballots cast, all for Hamid Karzai.
In the Omna district of Paktika province, 10 polling stations reported exactly 600 ballots cast, all for Hamid Karzai.
In the Sar Hawza district of Paktika province, 13 polling stations reported exactly 600 ballots cast, all for Hamid Karzai.
In the Yosef Khel district of Paktika province, 15 polling stations reported exactly 600 ballots cast, all for Hamid Karzai.
In the Zarghun Shahr district of Paktika province, various polling stations reported exactly 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, 600, and 600 ballots cast, all for Hamid Karzai. That's 34 polling stations, and 20,400 votes.
The distribution of ballots per station, for all of Paktika, looks like this:
The spike on the left is 71 stations that had no voting. The large spike is 159 stations stuffing all 600 ballots. Many of the tiny blips between are at even numbers like 300 ballots.
Voting in Paktika was not marred by fraud. There was no legitimate voting to be marred.
The whole of the province was a ballot stuffing.
The election in Paktika was a complete fiction.
The Wider Fraud
So far in this discussion, 88 Paktika province polling stations have reported 600 ballots, giving all of exactly 52,000 ballots to Hamid Karzai.
This is of course nowhere near a complete picture of the fraud in the Afghanistan 2009 election. The fraud was far wider. The styles more various.
The 34 Zarghun Shahr polling stations reported 600 ballots for Hamid Karzai. In each of the other three polling stations, exactly 600 ballots were cast, but not all for Karzai. Instead, exactly 300 ballots were allocated to other candidates.
Jani Khel district, next to Zarghun Shahr and formerly a part of it, gave exactly 200 ballots to other candidates. Its ballots per station was much more complex.
The 300 and the 200 ballots for other candidates in Zarghun Shahr and Jani Khel were dispersed among polling locations.
For expressing the idea that the election was a complete fiction, this Paktika polling center for women works pretty well.
Nuristan and the Previous Election
Nuristan province went 50% for Hamid Karzai, and 50% for Abudullah. Karzai had a margin of 197 votes.
The distribution of ballots per station in Nuristan looks like this:
The whole of Nuristan province was a ballot stuffing as well.
Divvied up allocations of votes to Karzai and Abdullah, at the polling station and polling location levels, were by collusion. What collusion existed at district or provincial levels, resulting in a 50/50 province split, can't be known. In a way, it makes no difference at what level the collusion existed, because none of the voting was real.
Official supervision of voting in Nuristan included events like this:
In polling centers 025, 024 and 023 IEC officials and a provincial council candidate from Doaaba District of Nuristan province forcefully evacuated all observers including FEFA observers.
Final Observation Report, Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan
in polling center ... 1303042 and 1303023 in Nuristan Province ... the count was carried out secretly and observers were not allowed to observe the process
Final Observation Report, Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan
The election in Nuristan was a complete fiction.
The Invalidation Process
Election results went through a messy and drawn out invalidation process.
The results shown here are from the September 16 uncertified final results, not the October 21 certified final results.
In the early audits, the Electoral Complaints Commission, looking at 88 Paktika polling stations giving all 600 ballots to one candidate, managed to find five instances of clear and convincing fraud:
In the course of its investigations, the ECC has found clear and convincing evidence of fraud in 5 polling stations in the province of Paktika.
Electoral Complaints Commission, September 10, 2009
Eventually, many of the Paktika stations with exactly 600 votes were invalidated. But many others were not.
For example, in Yosef Khel district, 11 stations of the 15 stations with 600 ballots were invalidated, but these four were not.
And five new stations were added. They were somehow discovered. In the process of auditing for fraud, the newly added stations had 600, 600, 600, 600, and 587 ballots.
A detailed comparison of the results indicated that in Paktika at least 30 polling centres were added to the count.
Who controls the vote?, Afghanistan Analysts Network
Fifty-eight percent of votes in Paktika province were wiped out, 77 polling stations. And yet, in the invalidation process, the total votes for provincial council went up.
The invalidation process in Paktika was a complete fiction.
Fraud and the War
Ballot box stuffing is strongly correlated with insurgent threat level. More, the places with high levels of vote stuffing are the places with high concentrations of U.S. bases.
Orange circles mark the bluntest of ballot box stuffing: 600 ballots or more in a station, and 100% of the ballots to a single candidate. Red and orange backgrounds show high and medium threat level:
Paktika is the highest concentration, in the southeast. Paktia and Khost are the line heading northheast from it. Kandahar is the concentration down the other direction, to the southwest.
Nuristan and Lehman are the concentration farther north and east.
This is the Paktika area closer up:
The Security Scam
The war in Afghanistan is often low and medium intensity. Around election time, the war was high intensity.
In addition to insurgent attacks on polling, there were many direct engagements between insurgents and the U.S. side.
The large dilemma in Paktika - as in many places in the Afghan south and south east - is the question on whether to open a larger number of polling centers on election day, which cannot be observed and thereby are highly prone for fraud, or whether to keep a considerable number of polling centers closed, creating less accessibility for voters and admitting that insecurity is widespread. In the 2009 presidential and provincial council elections there were 265 polling centers (for an estimated population of 400,000). The number has this year been reduced to 190 due to insecurity (and the linked level of fraud). Any considerable lesser number would be seen as loss of face for governmental authorities.
A pre-election visit to Paktika, Foreign Policy
Real voting cannot happen in the war zones. Impartial election observers did not visit.
Election observer organizations, knowing the inevitable, intentionally gave up on an observer role, so they might not see and need not speak:
The main multilateral delegations have opted for the ‘election support’ variant rather than the regular election‐observation mission, mainly so they can avoid making public statements about the quality of the elections.
Who controls the vote?, Afghanistan Analysts Network
No chance of real voting and no election observers, and this known beforehand but stations opened anyway, does not so much allow fraud
In the context of this insecurity, over-zealous and unscrupulous supporters may have indulged in fraud, to a greater or lesser degree.
Press Release, European Union Election Observation Mission
The lack of security made fraud harder to observe and easier to perpetrate.
Security and Electoral Fraud, National Democratic Institute
The insurgency, centred in the south and east of the country, may affect the ability of people in such areas to freely exercise their franchise and makes scrutiny of the process much more difficult, increasing opportunities for fraud.
Afghanistan's Election Challenges, International Crisis Group
as guarantee it.
Legitimate elections require security. Security was known beforehand not to exist. The elections proceeded anyway.
Legitimate elections require impartial observers. Impartial observers were known beforehand not to exist. The elections proceeded anyway.
The election in whole provinces of Afghanistan was a complete fiction.
The Wider Problem of Elections and Civil War
Afghanistan is under United States occupation. The U.S. controls some areas more, some areas less. Resistance and control varies by region.
Voting can occur only in places under U.S. control. Real representation of Afghanistan opinion simply cannot happen.
Elections under conditions of civil war and division of territory always have an unavoidable and inherent illegitimacy.
Who Controls the Paktika Elections?
The insurgencies cannot defeat the United States occupation. They seek to disrupt it.
Ability to hold elections in Paktika province is now completely disrupted. Over time, the ability to hold elections is being destroyed. Faith in elections plummets.
On elections, an area vital and strategic to U.S. interests, the insurgencies in Paktika are in control.
Whose Interests are at Stake?
The United States presents Afghanistan elections as a test of the legitimacy of Hamid Karzai.
But United States interests very strongly require elections in Afghanistan. Elections are a test of our own legitimacy.
The United States did not support any candidate in this election. Our only interest was the result fairly, accurately reflecting the will of the Afghan people, and that is what we will continue to support as the votes are counted, and we wait for the official results from the Afghan Independent Electoral Commission and the Electoral Complaints Commission.
Remarks by the President on the Recent Afghanistan Elections, August 21, 2009
Discussion of the matter is avoided. Administration statements on Afghnistsan elections are carefully crafted and parsed:
Q Speaking of that, you've talked a lot about the need for a credible, legitimate partner. Does the President consider President Karzai to be a legitimate, credible partner?
MR. GIBBS: President Karzai has been declared the winner of the Afghan election and will head the next government of Afghanistan. So obviously he's the legitimate leader of the country.
Briefing by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, November 2, 2009
Q Does the President regret calling the Afghan elections a success given the increasing reports of fraud by the Karzai camp that are still coming out?
MR. BURTON: Well, these -- for starters, the elections in Afghanistan are obviously historic.
Press Briefing By Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton, August 27, 2009
Government talk of election problems overwhelmingly focuses on violence and intimidation, and works very hard to avoid the most fundamental of other legitimacy issues:
In 2004, local and international concerns focused largely on the possibility of violence and intimidation, by both a growing insurgency and local strongmen. It however became increasingly clear over successive elections that, in reality, one of the most damaging factors for both the outcome and credibility of the vote was the occurrence of widespread irregularities, the failure to be seen to effectively address them, and the suspicion among voters that many of the interferences were centrally orchestrated or sanctioned.
Who Controls the Vote?, Afghanistan Analysts Network
Are Afghanistan Elections Hurting Democracy?
In wide regions of Afghanistan, real elections cannot be held. United States interests require elections. So completely fictional elections are held instead. Officials cannot admit this.
Official discussion of Afghanistan elections is reduced to Scott McClellan levels of farce:
Q President Obama, last month in Pittsburgh, said of the Afghan elections and the aftermath, "What's most important is that there's a sense of legitimacy in Afghanistan among the Afghan people for their government." Is there a sense of legitimacy in Afghanistan among the Afghan people for the Karzai government?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I have no reason to believe there is not.
Briefing by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, November 2, 2009
Q Yes, on Afghanistan, you’ve got something like 15 percent of the polling places have already been closed. You’ve got the Taliban warning people not to vote. You’ve got less international monitors than you had in the elections last year. You’ve got people terrified to vote and they’re expecting a very low turnout. Doesn’t this mean that the legitimacy of the election is in doubt?
MR. GIBBS: No, I don’t -- I would disagree with that.
Press Briefing by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, September 17, 2010
Trust in Afghanistan elections requires real elections, not fiction
Trust in American government requires real talk, not fiction.
The fictional way that Afghanistan elections are held, and the fictional way they are talked about by our government, hurts our democracy.
Additional Information About the 2009 Election
Districts won by Hamid Karzai, with primary ethnic group by district:
Districts won by Abdullah Abdullah and Ramazan Bashardost, with primary ethnic group by district:
Looking at the number of votes won for the top two candidates shows support for Abdullah in some Pashtun-majority areas in the southeast and east. He did not win any districts in these areas, but Abdullah, who is part Tajik, faired better in parts of Khost and Paktika where his campaign was able to organize large rallies before the election. Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun, won a handful of Tajik majority districts in Panjsher and Badakhshan. The Hazara-majority areas generally split the vote between Karzai and Bashardost.
Karzai, Abdullah and Ethnicity, National Democratic Institute
Provinces with greater than 50% of ballots invalidated:
Province Votes Removed
Paktika 88.5%
Nuristan 82.5
Kandahar 71.6
Paktia 67.0
Khost 63.0
Helmand 51.4
Farah 51.2
Main Sources
The fraud maps and results come from afghanistanelectiondata.org, by the National Democratic Institute. The site is a truly outstanding example of government transparency information, well presented.
Martine van Bijlert, Who Controls the Vote?, Afghanistan Analysts Network, is a very good guide to the 2009 elections, and covers voting for provincial council as well as president.