Partial Afghan poll results to be released

[September 23, 2010]  KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan officials plan to release the first partial results Thursday from last week's parliamentary election amid mounting allegations of fraud in a poll seen as a test of the Afghan government's commitment to rooting out corruption.

Saturday's vote was the first since a presidential election last year that was nearly derailed by widespread ballot-box stuffing and tally manipulation. That poll led many Western powers to question whether they should be supporting the administration of President Hamid Karzai with military forces and funds.

Preliminary partial results for the 249 parliamentary seats will be released Thursday, along with details on ballots that have been kept out of the count because of suspicions of cheating, said Election Commission spokesman Noor Mohammad Noor.

Full preliminary results are expected in early October, but final tallies won't be announced until the end of October at the earliest, because of the time needed to investigate fraud charges. About 2,500 candidates are running, making a large pool of people likely to file complaints.

Election day was marred by rocket attacks and bombings at polling stations in volatile areas. At least 21 civilians and nine police officers were killed during the voting, according to the Election Commission and the Interior Ministry.

Observers complained that many anti-fraud measures did not work. Some people were able to wash off supposedly indelible ink used to mark fingers and therefore prevent multiple voting, while in some areas poll workers let people use fake registration cards and allowed children to vote, according to the Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, the main independent Afghan observer group.

The country's anti-fraud watchdog said Tuesday it had received 1,496 complaints. The highest number of complaints were in the volatile eastern provinces of Khost and Nangarhar. Both of those areas were plagued by rocket attacks and Taliban intimidation on election day.

Observers noted nearly empty polling stations in insecure areas. Some of the safer voting sites in large cities were so clogged with voters that they ran out of ballots.

About 4.3 million ballots were cast in Saturday's vote, or 25 percent of the country's 17 million registered voters.

Nearly 6 million ballots were cast in last year's presidential vote, though many of those were thrown out as fraudulent.

Afghan officials originally planned enough polling sites to accommodate 12 million voters, but then cut those back multiple times because of security concerns, saying just before the poll they could accommodate 11.4 million voters.

Taliban attacks then kept even more voting sites closed on election day, according to the commission.

"A critical issue given that the constituencies are the provinces, is not necessarily the level of turnout -- although obviously there is a threshold below which people will start to question the election -- but the extent to which it is balanced across the province," said Mark Sedwill, NATO's senior civilian representative.

He added the goal is a parliament that reflects the makeup of the provinces.

"We hope that the outcome will be genuinely representative and inclusive so that every tribe ... every ethnic group within Afghanistan feels they have a fair representation in parliament," he said.

[Associated Press; By HEIDI VOGT]

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