Afghanistan Runoff Election Should Be Postponed To The Spring

[JimofPennsylvan]

The U.S. government in conjunction with NATO countries and the U.N. should lobby Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah to postpone the Afghanistan Presidential runoff election to the Spring. The fifteen or so days provided to organize a runoff election in Afghanistan is too short a time, there will be too much risk that there will be high levels of fraud, ballot stuffing, voter intimidation and/or low voter turn out. Consider the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's confidence level on this whole matter, it is reported he stated it would be a "huge challenge" to hold another election in Afghanistan without repeating massive fraud - and he is the guy the whole world is relying on to insure a good runoff election. What has been the biggest fear of people of good will throughout the world over the last two or three months with the Afghanistan Presidential Elections? It has been that these Presidential elections will be perceived as unfair and fraudulent by the Afghanistan people and the weak support for the central government by the Afghanistan people will become even weaker resulting in the countries failure. With these November 7th runoff elections the Afghanistan people and the world are facing the same Afghanistan public opinion danger, a critical issue and it is a critical issue because it bears on the issue will the Afghanistan people want the Afghanistan government to succeed and either the Afghanistan people start wanting the Afghanistan government to succeed or there is no hope for a democratic Afghanistan country. NATO countries have a limit on how much of their soldiers they will allow to be killed or wounded in Afghanistan and how much money they will spend to see Afghanistan succeed (the Afghanistan people at most have a two year window to show the security situation in Afghanistan is under control or NATO countries are going to walk).



If the runoff elections are postponed to the spring many things can be done to vastly improve the chances that there won’t be significant fraud in the elections. First, instead of using these plastic containers to collect the ballots with lids that are held on by plastic ties which can be cut the lid lifted and fraudulent ballots placed inside and new ties attached. Plastic container manufactures could be utilized to make containers that have no lids just a one circular hole where a ballot could be rolled up like a diploma and inserted inside and the manufacturers could mold in serial numbers on these containers and covers could be made for the hole in these containers and as soon as the polls close the hole cover could be epoxied onto the containers over the container hole and the containers with the ballots could be transported to three or four vote counting centers in a province where an opening would be cut into the containers and ballots removed and this cutting an opening, ballot removal and ballot counting would all have plenty of human monitors and be videotaped to prevent fraud. Once the polls would be closed election officials would call into the vote counting centers with the serial numbers of the containers they used to collect votes at their polling place and that all the used containers have hole covers epoxied on them. If those containers with those serial numbers don’t show up at the vote counting center or if those containers show sign of tampering the delivered containers would not be counted. The above process would make it very hard to see significant ballot stuffing.

If the runoff election were put off to the spring, good security measure could be made and implemented for every polling place in Afghanistan, human monitors from the Abdullah camp, Karzai camp and the UN could be obtained for every polling place throughout the country of Afghanistan. So that on election day, what goes on in those polling place can have extensive human scrutiny and election fraud can be blocked.



An incentive for Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah to accept this postponement of the runoff to the spring could be that the United States government will pay for the run off election. This makes sense from the United States standpoint because how much has the U.S. government spent in Afghanistan over the past eight years a quarter of a trillion dollars what is the realistic future expenditures $75 billion dollars a year for the next few years, the cost of run off election is peanuts compared to these sums when success of the whole Afghanistan mission is at stake. Plus Karzai and Abdullah both can’t be looking forward to being President of Afghanistan if they win if there is significant fraud or a very low voter turnout for these runoff elections because the Taliban and the enemies of the central government will use such factors to great effectiveness in turning Afghanistan public opinion against the Central government, making their tenure as President a very rough journey.

 

[waltky]

Abdullah pulls out of Afghan election review...

Abdullah withdraws from Afghan election review
August 27, 2014 — Afghan presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah pulled his support from the country’s United Nations-led election review Wednesday, arguing it was incapable of identifying the widespread fraud he believes took place.

His rival, Ashraf Ghani, removed his observers from the audit later in the day at the request of the U.N. assistance mission in the interest of fairness. There was a brief halt to the election audit, which resumed in the afternoon. A representative for the U.N. has said the audit will continue without both sides, if necessary. The review is already behind schedule because of frequent disputes between the two candidates and previous boycotts from Abdullah’s side. A prolonged boycott by Abdullah would call into question the legitimacy of any audit results, possibly leading to further uncertainty and unrest in the country. Afghanistan is already struggling with an entrenched insurgency and moribund economy, and it is running out of time to sign key agreements with NATO for a post-2014 military presence.

At issue this time is a phase of the audit that began Monday, an “invalidation” process that formally separates good votes from those deemed fraudulent. An Abdullah campaign spokesman said the criteria adopted by the U.N. for the new phase was too weak to identify the massive numbers of fraudulent votes the candidate believes exist. Abdullah’s decision is a blow to U.S. efforts to resolve the election through an impartial audit and to elicit agreement from both candidates to form a unity government including both the winner and the loser. “The truth is that we have won in two rounds of the election,” Abdullah spokesman Mujeeb-ur-Rahman Rahimi said. “And there are elements in this country that are not ready to accept democratic rule.” The original results from the June 14 runoff have Ghani ahead by more than a million votes. Abdullah received the most votes in the election in April.

The candidates had agreed to accept audit results under a deal brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry in July and pressed again earlier this month. Yet Abdullah’s campaign has complained that audit rules have been too lax to catch what it holds is a massive scale of fraud involving millions of votes. On Tuesday, an Abdullah campaign member demanded that the U.N. add three criteria to the invalidation process that had already been ruled out by the organization. The campaign threatened to boycott the audit if the steps weren’t accepted. Rahimi on Wednesday accused the Afghan organization conducting the audit, the Independent Election Commission, of rigging the process. He said ballot boxes from some provinces had been stuffed by officials after the boxes arrived in Kabul, and he claimed that some tally sheets of audited boxes were forged. He said such ballots wouldn’t be invalidated under the U.N. rules. “If the U.N. in its audit process doesn’t apply high standards, then what it does in this process is legitimize fraud instead of target it,” he said. “And that is what we’re not ready for.”

The campaign also seized upon a New York Times report last week citing unnamed Western analysts who said they believed Ghani had committed enough fraud to win the election. Those officials said that the fraud had been directed by a coterie of presidential aides and ministers and managed in each province by government, election and security officials. Rahimi said the only solution to the crisis was for the U.N. to accept the new criteria for the invalidation process. A member of the Ghani campaign said it expects the U.N. to keep the criteria unchanged, despite Abdullah’s protests. “We will keep a close eye on the audit process,” Ghani campaign member Dawood Sultanzoi said. “If the U.N. or international observers take any steps outside the national interest of the Afghanistan people, then they will have to answer to us.”

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See also:

UN: Afghan election undecided until after NATO summit
August 28, 2014 ~ The United Nations has asked Afghan President Hamid Karzai to once again delay the inauguration of a new president as an audit of disputed ballots goes on amid posturing by the candidates and sometimes physical fighting among their supporters.

On Thursday, the U.N.’s representative in Afghanistan, Jan Kubis, briefed Karzai on the status of the review, which the U.N. is overseeing after one of the candidates, Abdullah Abdullah, alleged massive fraud was committed on behalf of his opponent, Ashraf Ghani. Karzai and Western officials had been adamant about having the audit completed and a new president named in time for the winner to attend a crucial NATO summit next week, where leaders will decide on international commitments of troops and funds for Afghanistan after the end of the year. But Kubis told Karzai he expects the process won’t be completed any sooner than about Sept. 10.

Kubis insisted that “steady progress” was being made “with strict impartiality, professionalism and with even greater vigilance,” a press release said. But Kubis cautioned that a thorough review would take time. Thursday’s meeting came a day after Abdullah pulled his support from the audit, saying it was not capable of finding the fraud he says occurred. The U.N. then asked Ghani’s observers to recuse themselves from the process as well.

On Thursday, Abdullah spokesman Mujeeb-ur-Rahman Rahimi told Stars and Stripes that the delay does not affect the campaign’s boycott. But he said Abdullah was meeting personally with Ghani and that representatives had met with the U.N. mission earlier in the day. “If they take into account our reservations, then we are willing to rejoin the process,” he said. “But we will not rejoin the process if it just legitimizes fraud.” The delays, boycotts and threats have thrown doubt on the future of the international presence in Afghanistan.

American military officials are waiting for a new president to sign a deal that would lay out the terms for keeping nearly 10,000 U.S. troops in the country past the end of the year. Foreign donors who provide the billions of dollars upon which the Afghan government depends have said that a peaceful transfer of power is a prerequisite for further aid. It is not known who will represent Afghanistan at the Sept. 4-5 summit, but NATO officials say they have extended an invitation and that it is up to the Afghan government to decide whom they will send. Karzai’s spokesman has said the current president will not be attending.

UN Afghan election undecided until after NATO summit - News - Stripes