Democracy International issued the following press release today:

Kabul, Afghanistan – At 5PM today, the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) released the long anticipated decision resulting from the audit of  polling stations that met the criteria of its September 8, 2009, audit and recount order.

Democracy International has analysed the results from data previously released and believes  the ECC audit decisions should result in a runoff election, according to Afghanistan’s Electoral Law. Our calculations suggest the percentage rejection of the ballots cast in each of the audit categories will reduce  President Hamid Karzai’s level of support to approximately 48.29% of the overall vote. This reduces his vote share below the 50% threshold necessary for a first-round victory, and should necessitate a runoff election between Hamid Karzai, and the second-place candidate, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah.  The IEC has a responsibility to certify the results based on the ECC’s decisions.

In addition, the ECC has decided to invalidate 210 polling stations based on Priority A complaints, 147 of which are included in the IEC’s published preliminary result.

Based on DI’s analysis of the preliminary results and understanding of the ECC’s audit process, we believe the combined impact of these decisions is:

Note: Some percentages may not add precisely to 100.00% because of rounding to two decimal places.

The ECC has now given a decision on the audit process, the results of which appear to require a run-off election to be held. The IEC should now review the operational requirements to hold that election and set a date for the earliest possible polling.

As an audit of a sample of suspicious polling stations continues, the prospect of a runoff election is still unclear

The ECC and IEC are currently conducting an audit of a sample of the ballot boxes which meet the criteria defined in the September 8 ECC audit order. 3,498 polling stations meet the audit criteria, but they have decided only to audit a sample of these – roughly ten percent. They’ve separated the ballot boxes into six categories and are auditing a total of 358 ballot boxes.

Six audit teams are responsible for conducting the entire audit. Each team is composed of three members – an IEC team leader, an IEC team member, and a team member from UNDP elect. All audits are conducted at an audit center in Kabul which is supervised jointly by a team which consists of IEC, ECC, and UNDP-Elect staff.  Candidate agents and observers do have access to the audit center, although the results of individual audits are not being released, as they are considered part of an ongoing investigation.

To conduct an audit, the audit team uses a checklist which covers four main stages: a visual inspection of the ballot box, opening of the ballot box to discover if tampering occurred, whether the box contains the necessary materials, and whether or not the actual contents display signs of fraud. Such physical indicators of fraud include unfolded ballots, identical markings or significant patterns of markings, or discrepancies between the total ballots bundled and the total votes recorded on the results form.

If clear and convincing evidence of fraud is found for a particular polling station, all the results from that station will be invalidated. The ECC will then calculate a percentage of fraud for each of the six categories based on the results of the sample audit. These percentages will then be multiplied by the remaining votes not included in the 358 ballot box sample for each candidate in the respective categories. So, for example, if the ECC invalidates 55% of ballots from category A1 of the sample, it will then invalidate 55% of the ballots in that category for each candidate from the polling stations that were not sampled.

There are a number of methodological problems with this approach, but it was chosen to allow the IEC and ECC to conduct the audit relatively quickly. Once the audit process is complete and the new vote totals have been calculated, a final certified result will be announced. It’s important to understand that other ECC investigations are still ongoing and it’s unclear what effect these investigations will have on the outcome.

At this stage, it is still unclear whether a runoff election will be necessary. If the audit process produces a final certified result in which President Karzai has won less than fifty percent of the ballots being counted, a runoff should occur. The audit process is likely to be completed within the next few days and a final certified result could be announced as early as 15 October.

Earlier today, DI Principal Glenn Cowan testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia on the topic of the Afghan Elections. The following is a copy of his written statement:

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify here today. The issues surrounding the Afghan elections are crucial both for the democratic development of that country and for U.S. foreign policy in the region, and I am pleased to be able to share my thoughts and observations on what has happened so far and where the process should go in the future.

The August 20 elections in Afghanistan have yet to produce a credible result. On election day my organization, Democracy International, fielded more than 60 international observers throughout the country, including in the cities of Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Hirat, and to Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Helmand, Ghazni, Paktika, Zabul, Farah, and Badghis provinces. Initial reports from them and from other observer groups were largely positive. Despite the fact that violence and intimidation kept some voters and observers away from the polls in many areas, in much of the country Afghans were able to cast their votes freely.  The voters and polling station officials we observed conducted themselves admirably in the face of threats from the Taliban, and the basic administrative procedures of the election largely worked.

Despite the apparent success of election day, however, we cautioned at the time that the overall legitimacy of the process was far from certain. Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) still needed to tabulate and verify ballots. In addition, the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), a dispute resolution body with three of five members appointed by the UN, still needed to investigate thousands of complaints. There were pre-election concerns about the ease of ballot manipulation in an election conducted without a voter registry and fears of biased or corrupt local and provincial election officials. The inability of domestic and international observers to access the most daunting and problematic areas of the country compounded these concerns.

The month since election day has done significant damage to the credibility of the elections and the IEC.  The ECC received more than 2,000 complaints on and after election day, including hundreds that it believed could have a material effect on the result of the election. The results reporting process managed by the IEC proceeded slowly and fitfully, with the IEC releasing partial results every few days. The commission claimed a need to release geographically diverse vote counts, but in the event this practice was not followed – northern areas were reported considerably before southern areas, leading to the appearance of a late surge by Karzai. The IEC did not report a complete preliminary result for the Presidential race until September 16, 27 days after the election. It did not release Provincial Council results until September 26, more than five weeks after election day, and results from four key provinces – Kandahar, Paktika, Ghazni, and Nangarhar – are still being withheld. The significant delay and manipulation in the release of results has created an environment of suspicion that has substantially damaged trust in the IEC and the overall election process.
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