More Voting Stations Mean More Fraud In Afghanistan (Updated)

By Steve Hynd

It's got to the point where Afghanistan's Independent Electoral Commission isn't even pretending to be other than shills for a Karzai victory.

Observers and U.N. advisers attributed much of the cheating to so-called ghost polling stations that never opened but returned results or to stations that opened in areas without enough oversight to ensure a fair balloting. The U.N. recommended cutting the total number of polling stations to make sure there would were enough monitors and security at those that did open.

Despite this, the Independent Election Commission plans to open 6,322 voting centers on Nov. 7, election official Zekria Barakzai said. That's well above the 6,167 centers that opened in the first round.

"Discussions with security agencies and our logistic preparations" assured the commission that it would be possible to open more centers, Barakzai explained.

Barakzai said that Afghan and international forces had said they could provide security for as many as 6,600 voting centers and that the election officials had decided to cut that by almost 300 because of concerns about fraud.

However, it is still unclear if there will be enough staff to run the stations or if voters and observers will consider centers in volatile areas safe enough even with the security force assurances.

And while election officials have promised that workers complicit in fraud in the first round will not be rehired, they have yet to say how many people that includes. The U.N. has said that about 200 district field coordinators out of some 3,000 had complaints against them and should be replaced, but the election commission has not confirmed this.

The U.N. had also recommended that only 5,817 voting centers open and that none of those that failed to open in the first round be put on the list for a runoff. Those in charge of logistics had said in recent days that they were planning for the smaller number.

So the IEC have decided to open 505 more sites than the UN's electoral body recommended, and 155 more than the last time when fraud was made easier by there being too many stations to properly secure and monitor. This time there are less troops in rural areas, less election workers to go around and the Karzai-loyalist who heads the IEC has already said Karzai will win.

Folk like Holbrooke are already trying to pre-emptively spin the run-off elections as a success that legitimizes the Afghan government. No wonder no-one believes them.

Update: More missing money too!

The United Nations cannot account for tens of millions of dollars provided to the troubled Afghan election commission, according to two confidential U.N. audits and interviews with current and former senior diplomats.

...As of April 2009, the U.N. had spent $72.4 million supporting the commission, with $56.7 million of that coming from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the audit said. Total election costs are now estimated at greater than $300 million, with the U.S. providing a third to half the total funding, according to one senior U.N. official familiar with the elections process.

The draft audit reports indicate that as many as one-third of payroll requests from the Afghan commission to the United Nations included "discrepancies," such as incorrect names or amounts.

In another instance, the U.N. Development Program paid $6.8 million for transportation services in areas where no U.N. officials were present. Auditors found that the development agency had "inadequate controls" over U.S. taxpayer money used to fund the commission.

It's a pretty safe bet a fair bit of the missing cash ended up in the pockets of Karzai and his supporters.