Ghani retains lead as Afghan vote audit continues

85,000 votes declared bogus; more than 200,000 votes of Ghani and over 120,000 of Abdullah may be invalidated

Of the 29 percent of ballots from the Afghan presidential election that have been audited so far, 54,000 votes of Dr Ashraf Ghani and 31,000 votes of Dr Abdullah were found bogus, officials reportedly said on Tuesday. Statistics show that Ghani retains the lead with 1,210,602 votes while Abdullah has bagged 1, 081,645 votes so far while the fate of 40,495 votes polled by Ghani and 20,936 by Abdullah is yet to be determined.

As many as 1,170, 107 votes cast for the Ghani-led Change Continuity team were scrutinised till Monday and 54,505 ballots were found fraudulent. Similarly, 1,060,709 votes of the Abdullah-headed Reform and Unanimity team were reassessed and 31,857 declared factitious.

The figures indicate that most of Ghani’s bogus votes have come from nine polling sites, where more than 500 ballots were declared forged at each site. Four of these sites are located in Panjwai District, Kandahar.

Three such sites are in Afghanistan’s south-eastern Paktika province, where 595 votes from a polling station in Barmal, 546 in Sar Rawza and 590 in Orgun districts were adjudged fake.

A ballot box involving 510 votes from Chak district of central Maidan Wardak and another with 900 votes from the Injil district of western Herat province have also been invalidated.

The highest number of bogus votes cast for Abdullah came from two polling sites in central Logar province, having 594 and 591 ballots, and one from the Janikhel district of Paktika provinces, with 579 votes.

According to the documents, 6,644 ballot boxes from Kabul, Balkh, Paktika, Laghman, Herat, Paktia, Logar, Faryab, Kandahar, Panjsher, Takhar, Ghor, Sar-i-Pul, Parwan, Badghis, Badakhshan, Baghlan, Nuristan, Jawzjan, Ghazni, Kapisa, Maidan Wardak and Zabul provinces are yet to be audited

In line with the current audit trends, more than 200,000 votes of Ghani and over 120,000 of Abdullah may be invalidated.

Abdullah’s camp’s spokesman Mujib Rahimi said the exact number of genuine votes would be known after the invalidation process came to an end.