Afghan recount ordered; Karzai nears outright win

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Afghan recount ordered; Karzai nears outright win

By HEIDI VOGT, Associated Press Writer Heidi Vogt, Associated Press Writer – Tue Sep 8, 11:15 am ET

KABUL – A U.N.-backed commission Tuesday ordered a recount of tainted ballots from the Afghan presidential vote, saying it had "convincing evidence of fraud," even as President Hamid Karzai for the first time surpassed the threshold needed to avoid a run-off and win re-election.

Doubts are growing about the Aug. 20 election's credibility, a key step in U.S. and European efforts to strengthen the Afghan government and bolster declining support for the almost eight-year war against a spreading Taliban insurgency.

The U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission, an independent body with the power to investigate and nullify fraudulent votes, ordered a recount Tuesday at polling stations where it had found "clear and convincing evidence of fraud."

That means that Karzai could still have votes taken away from him. More than 720 major fraud charges have been lodged with the complaints commission.

Daoud Ali Najafi, chief electoral officer of the Afghan-run Independent Election Commission which organized the vote, said that recounting votes could take "two months or three months," suggesting the already overextended election is likely far from over. Officially certified results were due by late September.

With results in from almost 92 percent of the country's polling sites, Karzai has 54.1 percent of the votes, pushing him over the threshold that would allow him to declare victory outright and avoid a run-off with his main challenger. Abdullah Abdullah.

As more results have come in from the south, where Karzai's support is strong, former foreign minister Abdullah's standing has slipped dramatically. He now has 28.3 percent of the vote.

But the credibility of the election is increasingly in question. The Afghan-run election commission has already quarantined ballots from more than 600 polling stations ruled to have been suspected of fraud, out of more than 26,000 stations. The results announced Tuesday do not include those ballots, Najafi said. The U.N.-backed complaint commission will investigate and determine whether they can be counted or be discarded.

So far about 5.7 million votes have been tallied, including 250,000 ballots discarded either because the presidential candidate had officially withdrawn or because of problems with the ballot, such as a vote cast for two candidates.
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The top U.N. representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, called on Afghan election officials to exclude ballots from the vote count that have "evidence of irregularities."

U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry met with Karzai on Monday and talked about the election, said U.S. Embassy spokeswoman, Caitlin Hayden. She declined to provide further details.

Najafi said he did not have a regional breakdown of the discarded results, but said investigation teams have been sent to Ghazni, Paktika and Kandahar provinces.

A senior Western diplomat alleged Monday that a majority of the votes in three provinces — Kandahar, Paktika and Khost — are fraudulent. Partial returns from each of those provinces heavily favor Karzai. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of his work. Others have said there have been as many as 800 fake polling sites from which tallies came in.

Najafi said it was unlikely that 800 polling stations were faked, and said the most recent number of fraud-annulled stations he had was the 447 announced Sunday.
Afghan recount ordered; Karzai nears outright win - Yahoo! News