The Real Failure of the Afghan Election
As CIA Director Leon Panetta has noted, it is likely that after throwing away some votes, the current recount will confirm Karzai's first-round victory. The New York Times reported on September 16 that, according to the official tally, Karzai had 3,093,256 votes, or 54.6 percent; Abdullah had 1,571,581 votes, or 27.8 percent; there were 5,662,758 valid votes. One of the European Union monitors said 1.1 million suspicious votes belonged to Karzai and 300,000 to Abdullah; these were not necessarily fraudulent votes but votes that needed to be investigated. If every "suspicious" vote were thrown out, then the final tally would be Karzai 46.8 percent, Abdullah 29.8 percent, and under the rules, there would be a second round, because Karzai didn't get 50 percent in the first round.
Get the latest reports & analysis with people's perspective on Protests, movements & deep analytical videos, discussions of the current affairs in your Telegram app. Subscribe to NewsClick's Telegram channel & get Real-Time updates on stories, as they get published on our website.
