Kabul, Afghanistan – Election officials and observers said Sunday that with 80 percent of the ballots counted in Afghanistan’s national and provincial elections, they had found significant incidents of fraud.
Whole districts have come under suspicion for ballot-box stuffing and proxy voting, said Peter Erben, the chief of the U.N.-assisted Joint Election Management Board.
He said ballot boxes from 4 percent of the country’s 26,000 polling stations – about 1,000 stations – had been set aside for investigation on suspicion of fraud and other irregularities.
The European Union observer mission said the reports of fraud and possible intimidation of voters in places were “worrying.”
In a statement, the mission said, “While these phenomena do not appear to be nationwide, they are a cause for concern.”
Erben promised strong action and said that if there were a clear indication of fraud, the votes in question would be excluded from the general count.
The Election Complaints Commission could also warn, fine and disqualify candidates if there was evidence of tampering, he said.
One of the worst cases has been in Paghman, a district west of Kabul, which is the stronghold of Abdul Rab Rassoul Sayyaf, a powerful wartime faction leader and close ally of President Hamid Karzai.
Ballot boxes from 95 polling stations in Paghman have been set aside for further inspection, and 30 to 40 of those had been cleared for counting by Sunday, election officials said.
The rest would be excluded from the count because of clear evidence of fraud, one foreign observer said.
Sayyaf is running for a seat in the Wolesi Jirga, or the lower house of parliament, and is in fourth place with 2,105 votes.
Only 20 percent of the results for Kabul have been tabulated so far, but he is nevertheless well placed to win one of the 33 seats in the province.
The American military reported Saturday that one U.S. soldier and one Afghan soldier were killed Friday in a clash with insurgents in Kandahar, a southern province.
Another U.S. soldier and two Afghans were wounded in the attack. Violence in Afghanistan has sharply increased in recent months.