Speaking at a press conference in Kabul on Tuesday, Independent Election Commission (IEC) spokesman Noor Mohammad Noor said results sheets from 11 provinces have safely arrived at the commission's central office in the capital and the voting counting process is expected to start next Monday.
Results from Kabul, Panjshir, Parwan, Kapisa, Logar, Baghlan, Paktia, Kunar, Nangarhar, Laghman and Wardak provinces have been logged at the IEC's headquarters.
Votes from 5,718 polling sites of those 11 provinces have reportedly been counted and added to the IEC's database. According to the IEC, results from 5,604 more sites have been successfully transferred from district offices to central provincial offices. The final leg of their transfer process will be to bring them to the capital.
"The result sheets from Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul, Helmand, Nimruz, Herat, Farah, Badghis and Ghor provinces will arrive by the end of today," Noor said on Tuesday.
The commission spokesman added that the first announcement of results would be a partial one, once 35 percent have been counted. The next announcement will be of 70 percent, and then the preliminary results will be realized on July 2.
However, it has become clear in the days since Saturday's runoff election that, while it may have been less than the first round, there was still a significant amount of fraud. The vetting and complaints investigation process, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of votes being thrown out from the first round in April, is surely to impact the ultimate vote count.
Election monitoring groups have urged the IEC to be careful in the results announcement process, focusing on transparency and giving access to observers.
“Considering the sensitive situation in Afghanistan, the commissions should do everything before the eyes of observers to convince the candidates,” head of Afghanistan Democracy Watch Zakaria Barakzai said.
Election officials will not announce final results of the election before July 22.
According to IEC Chairman Ahmed Yousuf Nuristani, more than seven million voters participated in Saturday's election.
Source/Fuente: http://www.tolonews.com/elections2014/result-sheets-11-provinces-arrive-...
