Premature Claims of Victory Undermine Afghan Election’s Legitimacy

Afghanistan held its fourth presidential election since the Taliban government fell in 2001 on September 28. Since the last presidential election in 2014 witnessed enough threats and fraud to send it into a second round, many were concerned about the legitimacy of this election. The two candidates this year, Chief Executive Abdullah Abuullah and incumbent President Ashraf Ghani, have butted heads since the controversial 2014 elections, when they decided to share power thanks to a U.S.-brokered pact. 

After the first round of this year’s elections, both Ghani and Abdullah claimed victory despite the ongoing official count. Abdullah, at a news conference on September 30, declared, “We have the most votes in this election,” while Ghani’s running mate Amrullah Saleh insisted that Ghani had clearly won the election and that “the information that we have received show that 60 to 70 percent of people voted [for] us.” As of right now, both assertions are unsubstantiated: senior Independent Election Committee (IEC) official Habib Rahman Nang denounced both officials, stating, “No candidate has the right to declare himself the winner. According to the law, it is the IEC that decides who is the winner.” 

Before the elections, 9.6 million Afghan citizens were registered to vote, but threats of violence, election fraud, and other legal barriers led to a low voter turnout paralleling the 2014 presidential election. The historically low turnout caused officials to extend voting by two hours, but this extension has prompted concerns that that voter districts with significantly higher voter turnouts, with some districts eclipsing 90 percent, may be victims of artificial ballot stuffing. In many districts, where violence spikes around elections to scare away voters, such huge voter turnouts are next to impossible. One such district is the province of Faryab, where local elder Abdul Qayum Kohi said, “I am not going to lie, I didn’t see many people coming out to vote. There was fighting everywhere, mortars landing. Many people were too afraid to come out.” Despite his account, the province still boasted improbably high voter turnout, which only fueled suspicions of ballot-box stuffing. 

The newly revamped IEC must sort through voter hoaxes, a task it has promised to accomplish through the use of its new biometric voter identification system. The new system records photos and fingerprints at every voting station, which servers then use to eliminate duplicate votes. The IEC was also recently revamped: new commissioners were appointed to avoid any instances of internal fraud. 

The results of the election’s first round will come out on October 19. If no candidate secures over 50 percent of the vote, the runoff election will be conducted in November.