The Independent Election Commission (IEC) released details on Sunday about voting centers and sites that will be used for the presidential runoff on June 14.
Based on the list provided Sunday, 6,423 voting centers, connected to 23,313 sites, will be open on Election Day. Similar to the first round, 748 voting centers will remain closed.
The IEC has said insecurity remains the biggest challenge facing the second round. The Taliban has launched a heightened campaign of violence in the weeks since the first round, which was generally peaceful. The start of the annual fighting season has accompanied the warming weather around the country.
“All the 6,423 centers must be secured so that no one is left behind because of security,” IEC Secretariat Chief Zia-ul-Haq Amarkhail said on Sunday.
The Election Security Commission was said to be in the process of reviewing election security and coordinating with the Afghan security forces. Security officials have assured that all necessary precautions will be taken to keep voters safe. Some 3,000 newly trained soldiers have been deployed around the country ahead of the runoff.
Meanwhile, the list of government officials who meddled in the first round of elections remains undisclosed. The IEC has claimed the list was sent to the government with at the officials could be punished. But the government has not taken any action against the individuals and has said the list was never received.
“Now it depends on related institutions and organizations to decide what they want to do against the officials who meddled, whether they want to fire them or not," Amarkhail said on Sunday. "We have shared the list, that is how much authority we have."
The IEC has assured the public that the runoff will be better than the first round, which was praised as a success by leaders around the world.
Source/Fuente: http://www.tolonews.com/elections2014/iec-releases-list-voting-centers-a...
