Full preliminary results expected from Afghan vote

[September 16, 2009]  KABUL (AP) -- Afghan election officials plan to release the full preliminary results Wednesday from last month's presidential vote, though the much-delayed total has lost some significance in an election now likely to be determined by the outcome of fraud investigations.

With about 93 percent of preliminary results already released, President Hamid Karzai leads top challenger Abdullah Abdullah with 54 percent of the vote, comfortably above the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff.

However, a U.N.-backed group investigating fraud has ordered a massive audit and recount of at least 10 percent of voting stations, meaning that enough votes could end up being thrown out to push Karzai below 50 percent.

About 27 percent of results published so far indicate fraud, the European Union's election observation team said. Spokesman Hasseebullah Shinwary said the EU team counted about 1.5 million suspicious ballots among the 5.5 million released so far as valid, using fraud triggers such as overly high turnout or a preponderance of votes for one candidate.

Final, certified results cannot be released until all investigations, audits and recounts are finished, making results from the fraud-tainted election likely to be weeks away. The longer the delay, the more difficult any potential runoff becomes because winter snows often block villages and roads in the mountainous country starting in November.

U.S. and U.N. election observers say they believe any potential runoff needs to be held before winter sets in to avoid a delay until spring that would leave the country with a potential power vacuum as the Taliban increases its attacks. Certified results originally were to have been released this week.

Noor Mohammad Noor, a spokesman for the Afghan commission in charge of the election, said all of the election's preliminary results will be released Wednesday, after having been pushed back multiple times. Noor said the delay in preliminary results was not due to deliberations over which votes to throw out but to "technical problems" with reading some of the forms.

He referred questions about fraud allegations to the Electoral Complaints Commission, the U.N.-backed group of three international and two Afghan commissioners looking into the allegations.

Outside monitors have accused the Afghan election commission, which is run by Karzai appointees, of loosening its own fraud-identification measures part way through the counting.

The deputy head of the U.N. mission here said the 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. The official, Peter Galbraith, left Afghanistan this weekend after a dispute with his boss, Kai Eide, over the U.N.'s best approach to the allegations of fraud.

Noor said results from more than 600 polling stations were not being included in Wednesday's expected release because of suspicious vote tallies.

Separately, Grant Kippen, the Canadian head of the Electoral Complaints Commission, said more than 2,500 of the 26,300 polling stations open on Aug. 20 need to be recounted because of potential fraud. The complaints panel has already thrown out ballots from 83 polling stations because of fraud allegations, all in areas with high support for Karzai.

Thousands of fake ballots were submitted across the country, and returns showed Karzai winning 100 percent of the vote in some districts. The most serious complaints were lodged in southern Afghanistan, where Karzai's fellow ethnic Pashtuns predominate, though Kippen said all provinces were affected by the recount order.

[Associated Press; By HEIDI VOGT]

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