KABUL - The Independent Election Commission (IEC) said on Saturday that they have received 1,843,107 biometric votes in line with information from the Dermalog Company out of a total of 1,929,333 biometrically verified ballots.
Addressing reporters, IEC Commissioner Awrang Zeb said 86,226 votes did not meet the criteria due to problems in photographs, finger-prints and repeated attachment of election voter registration certificate stickers.
He said IEC technical team was working to segregate the 86,226 votes per polling center and polling station and then the Commission will decide on their audit and recount.
The IEC commissioner also expressed the electoral body’s inability to announce the presidential election result on November 14 due to the need to identify and remove the offending ballots.
However, Commissioner Aurang Zeb asserted the IEC was capable and ready to recount votes from suspicious polling centres and stations in the provinces.
He said they will conduct trips to the provincial electoral office in each provincial capital city for recount after such sites were identified through investigation by the IEC team.
According to Dermalog Company, election workers in many cases issued ballot paper barcode after the official time of voting on Election Day and before the time early in the morning and biometric devices in such areas were deactivated. Election workers then used the spare devices for recording voters during the official time, the source said.
In addition, there were cases in which votes were recorded without being polled and two ballot papers were registered in the same polling station but these votes have been quarantined.
Zabihullah Sadat, IEC acting spokesman, confirmed 137,630 voters had been server quarantined by Dermalog Company due to safeguard criteria related to the use of the voter verification devices and said the decision had been shared with the Commission. The polling stations corresponding to these voters may have to undergo further IEC investigation to determine if polling at these locations was properly conducted. (Pajhwok)