Afghanistan Analysts Network – English

Posts tagged: Presidential elections

Presidential elections

Afghanistan’s 2019 Elections (31): A review of the disputed presidential election and its aftermath

Ali Yawar Adili •

On the first anniversary of Afghanistan’s fourth – and much disputed – presidential election of the post-Taleban order, we look back at the events surrounding the election and its aftermath to provide a concluding overview. AAN’s Ali Yawar Adili reviews what happened before, during and after the election, looks at the votes that swung the […]

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Afghanistan’s 2019 Elections (30): Final results… and parallel governments?

Thomas Ruttig •

Afghanistan’s 28 September 2019 presidential election has finally meandered to what may be its end after almost five months, with the Independent Election Commission (IEC) declaring incumbent Ashraf Ghani the first-round winner. However, the result is too narrow and disputed, and the manner of dealing with complaints not transparent enough to quash doubts in his […]

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Afghanistan’s 2019 Elections (29): A statistical overview of the preliminary results

Ali Yawar Adili •

After four and half months, the final results of the presidential election are still yet to be announced after the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) ordered a partial audit of more than 200,000 suspicious votes and a recount of almost 600 polling stations where there were discrepancies or missing biometric data. At the point where we […]

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Afghanistan’s 2019 Election (25): contradictory figures and low turnout in Kandahar

Fazl Rahman Muzhary •

Kandahar’s turnout looks like it will be less than half the national average, pending finalisation of the numbers. There are many possible reasons for this, chief among them fraud, with limited reporting but plenty of anecdotal evidence of ballot stuffing and other irregularities. But Kandaharis also seem to have been deterred by the low level […]

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Afghanistan’s 2019 Election (24): Disputed recount, threats not to accept results, and some interesting new data

Ali Yawar Adili •

The Independent Election Commission (IEC) has overruled the demand by most of the presidential candidates to invalidate around 300,000 out of the 1.8 million votes (about 16 per cent) from the 28 September presidential election. Critics wanted these excluded before the IEC started auditing and recounting the votes from 8,255 ‘problematic’ polling stations. However, the […]

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BVV devices unloaded in IEC’s Warehouse Three where they were checked before being sent for data transfer. That transfer is now complete, but disputes over turnout continue. Photo: Ali Yawar Adili, 3 October 2019

Afghanistan’s 2019 Election (23): Disputed biometric votes endanger election results

Ali Yawar Adili • Jelena Bjelica •

Almost 40 days after the election, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) has still not been able to give a final turnout figure for the presidential election. The latest figure announced by the IEC is just over 1.8 million, but this does not seem to be the final count. As for the 770,000 to 900,000 votes […]

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BVV devices that have arrived in IEC’s Warehouse 3 in Kabul. They will be checked and then sent to IEC headquarters for their data to be transferred to the IEC server. Photo: Ali Yawar Adili, 3 October 2019

Afghanistan’s 2019 Election (21): BVV devices and a delay in announcing preliminary results

Ali Yawar Adili • Jelena Bjelica • Thomas Ruttig •

The Independent Election Commission (IEC) has completed the transfer of data from the biometric devices to its central server. Those 1,932,673 votes now need to be gone through using a verification process to weed out duplicate, underage and ‘photo-proxy’ votes. Only then, will the IEC know the final number of biometrically-validated votes. It has also, […]

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Afghanistan’s 2019 Election (14): In Herat, power and comms failure, district insecurity and low turnout

S Reza Kazemi •

There was a slight increase in campaigning in the last few days ahead of the poll, especially in the provincial capital, but E-Day itself suffered from electricity and telecommunication failures in many parts Herat province. Worse, the Taleban launched attacks on areas near polling centres in districts across the province with a view mostly to […]

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Rallies, Debate, Rain and Snow: The 2014 presidential election campaign starts

Kate Clark •

The Afghan presidential election campaign has kicked off – two months before polling day. Candidates are showing a range of attitudes, from launching big, brash public rallies to a rather desultory ‘we start tomorrow’ attitude. With no evident frontrunner, it seems the campaign will involve a real attempt to win over voters and will be […]

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Candidates on Camera: Interviewing the next president of Afghanistan

Kate Clark •

Although campaigning for the presidential elections does not officially start until February 2014, the media has started interviewing the eleven candidates. This is a time for journalists to find out their plans and try to elicit specific promises on what they will or will not do should they become president. Most candidates have pasts to […]

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Not a pleasant prospect

AAN Team •

The Economist, 12 October 2013 Martine van Bijlert’s AAN dossier on elections is quoted in an article looking at the field of presidential aspirants in Afghanistan, saying: “An article by Martine van Bijlert of the Afghan [sic] Analysts Network, a respected research group, lists the problems: a defective voter registry; millions of available voter cards […]

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The Last Minute Frenzy of Afghanistan’s Candidate Registration

Martine van Bijlert •

The registration for Afghanistan’s 2014 presidential election continued until the very late hours of 6 October 2013. Although it was to be expected that the political horse-trading and deal-making would continue until the last minute, the scramble that finally ensued took everybody by surprise and mixed up all electoral alliances that had been forged in the weeks before. The AAN team […]

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