This is the third episode of Democracy International’s Afghan Election Podcast from it’s Election Observation Mission to Afghanistan. In this episode, DI Senior Program Officer, Bill Gallery, gives an update on election preparations, discusses how potential last minute deals between candidates will affect what a voter sees at the polls, and talks about how Democracy International will respond to reports of fraud it hears up to and on Election Day. This podcast is available on iTunes. Continue after the break for the full interview transcript.

IT’S SIX DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION, AND HE’S GOING TO GIVE US AN UPDATE ON WHAT’S BEEN GOING ON. SO, FIRST BILL, COULD YOU JUST, LIKE I SAID, GIVE US AN UPDATE ON ELECTION PREPARATIONS, AND HOW THINGS ARE PRECEDING IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS.

Yeah, sure thing. The most exciting news in the election preparation front is that the IEC has received advice from security services in the country on the number of polling stations that they have recommended be shut down for security reasons, and number of polling stations they recommend being moved for security reasons. I think this is … the total number is a little over 600, so almost 10 percent of the total polling centers in the country. Obviously a large number of those are going to be in the South, a disproportionate number of them are going to be in the South, because that’s the area of the worst violence so far.

So, the IEC has to decide now, how many of those polling centers actually to closed, how many of them to move, and how are they going to deal with voters who are going to have trouble voting as the result of that.

ANY OTHER UPDATES ON ELECTION PREPARATIONS?

Yeah, another interesting development is the number of observers that so far have been accredited by the IEC. At this point we’re talking about more than 180,000 candidate and political party agents, members of the media, and international and domestic observers. That’s particularly interesting because as we just said, we’re talking about maybe 6,400 or 6,500 polling centers in the country. So if you do the math that’s something like 30-plus observers per polling center, and you have to imagine that they’re going to be fairly well-concentrated in some of the more urban areas, and the more secure areas.

The IEC has made procedural rule about this. Polling center officials can choose to have observers cycle through, so there’s never too many in anyone spot, but there’s a couple of interesting implications: number one, all of those people certified or accredited probably won’t be showing up; number two, there’s going to be some crowded polling centers on election day, which I think makes sense given the high level of international and domestic attention has been paid into this election.

And finally, on a more administrative note, the polling materials, which includes ballots, ballot boxes, ballot box seals, voter ink, ink for the finger of the voters, are all being delivered to polling stations as we speak. So, they’re getting ready, to get things going six days from now.

GREAT, I GUESS ON A DIFFERENT TOPIC HERE, IN THE LAST FEW DAYS ESPECIALLY, WE HEARD, REPORTS OF POTENTIAL DEALS BETWEEN CANDIDATES, OR EVEN WITH LOCAL TALIBAN COMMANDERS TO PREVEN VIOLENCE. WHAT IS DEMOCRACY INTERNATIONAL’S TAKE ON THESE REPORTS?

Well, obviously, we don’t have much more information we can provide on how likely any of these things are going to happen. I would say that we’re getting close to the election, so if any of these can happen, it’ll need to happen in the next couple of days. This is particularly so, because in a country like Afghanistan where you have relatively poor media penetration, difficulty of communicating between areas of the country, if a candidate did withdraw at this point, there’s a few practical barriers that actually getting that information out. For the candidate themselves, if they choose to endorse someone, they’re going to need to get that information to their supporters, make sure their supporters know, you know, I’ve endorsed candidate “X”, which takes time, and it’s a difficult thing to do, so at this stage there are some practical limitations to the political effect of that. That’s not to say that it won’t happen, not to say that we have any information on what kind of deals are or being made, but it’s interesting to think about how it would work on the ground.

AND FOR A VOTER’S STANDPOINT, HOW WOULD THIS AFFECT THEIR EXPERIENCE ON THE ELECTION DAY?

Well, at this point, all of the ballots have been printed for a while now, so the names and the pictures and the symbol on the ballots aren’t going to change. The way the IEC is planning and handling this, and there have already been some candidates who dropped out over the last few weeks and months, so this is something that’s going to come up no matter what happened from here on out. But the way the IEC is planning and handling this is they’ll do the count at the polling center level, they count the votes were cast for whomever regardless of whether they’re still running or not, and then in Kabul they’ll basically strike out any votes for candidates who have officially withdrawn in writing to the IEC. Because this is a two-round election, the winner needs to get more than 50% of the vote, someone needs to get more than 50% of the votes, in the first round to win. So, striking out those votes for candidates who have withdrawn, is actually significant, both from an election administration and a political standpoint.

SO, JUST TO BE CLEAR, IF A CANDIDATE WITHDRAWS HIS OR HER VOTES DON’T GET ADDED TO THE CANDIDATE THEY SUPPORT, THEY JUST BECOME INVALID. IS THAT RIGHT?

Right, Any ballots marked for a candidate who has officially withdrawn, is an invalid ballot. It doesn’t count as a vote. So, if candidate “X”, is trying to get the 50 percent, those votes don’t count as part of the total number of votes, the hundred percent.

OK. AND FINALLY WE’VE HEARD SOME REPORTS RECENTLY, BOTH TO OUR MISSION AND ALSO IN THE MEDIA OF VOTE BUYING AND MAYBE SOME OTHER FORMS OF FRAUD PRE-ELECTION, IS THIS SOMETHING THAT DI OBSERVERS ARE FOCUSING ON, AND HOW MUCH OF CONCERN SHOULD THIS BE?

This is definitely something we’ve heard about too, you know both within the media, and from sources on the ground here in Afghanistan. It’s clearly an area of concern. It does lead to the potential for fraud. The vote buying you kind of hear of on the retail level, like going to the market and buying a couple of registration cards. We can’t really be sure how widespread that is. I’d say that’s not the number one concern in terms of affecting the outcome of the election. It’s relatively difficult to get enough votes through that process, and it’s relatively expensive to swing the outcome of especially the presidential race. What might be more of a concern to us is officials, local leaders, political agents, or whomever, who have access to large numbers of voters registration cards, either through buying that has already happened or through illegitimate registration of people during the voter registration phase, you know, fake voters, or whatever. Those large blocks of voter cards have more potential to be a problem for the election than the kind of retail vote buying that goes on on the street.

SO HOW WOULD THAT WORK IN THE POLLING STATIONS, IF SAY SOME LOCAL LEADER HAS A THOUSAND VOTER REGISTRATION CARDS THAT ARE FRAUDULENT THAT HE OR SHE HAS IN HIS POSSESSION, HOW WOULD THAT TURN INTO A FRAUDULENT RESULT FROM THAT POINT CENTER ON ELECTION DAY?

The polling center procedures actually, you know, do have systems in place for preventing individual voters from voting twice. They have primarily, each voter is supposed to ink their fingers after they voted so they can’t go into another polling station and vote again with another voting card or with a same voting card.

So, that kind of individual double voting actually, there is a system for preventing that or deterring that at least. If somebody wants to really put in a bunch of fraudulent votes into a ballot box, they’re going to need either the cooperation or the coercion of the polling station officials to allow them to go in there and put in a bunch of fake ballots. So basically they have, say, a hundred voting cards in their possession, if they can get access to the ballot box, either by getting the cooperation of the officials, or stealing a ballot box, or whatever, then they can use those cards to fill out a hundred fake ballots, and they can write down the numbers on the voter registration cards, which are legitimate numbers those are legitimate voter registration cards, they just don’t correspondent to an actual voter. And the problem with that is that after the fact there’s no way to detect that kind of fraud. You have legitimate ballots filled out with legitimate voter registration numbers, and if there’s no observer around to see it happen, then those ballots are just going into a box, into a bag, then sent to Kabul, and it’s really tough to find out where they came from, whether there’s actual voters behind that mark on the ballot.

OK, SO, WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

The campaign period ends 48 hours before polls open on election day. So 7 am on Tuesday, JULY [sic] 18, which is about three, four days from now. The main candidates are definitely still campaigning hard throughout the country. We’ve seen number of rallies here in Kabul for the last few days. For us, we’ve got short term observers who have been arriving in country of the last couple of days, we’re going to be giving them briefings, we’re going to get them meeting with candidates and other officials, we’re going to get them out to, at this point, thirteen provinces, around the country, which we’re very proud of. We’re going to get people to some provinces where no other international observers are planning on going, so hopefully between us and the rest of international and domestic observers group we’re going to have close to, we’re going to have at least pretty widespread coverage of the country, not everywhere, but a lot more places than I think people were thinking a couple of months ago.

GREAT, THANKS VERY MUCH.