Turnout was 40% amid widespread fraud and voter intimidation Afghanistan’s election authorities have cancelled 1.3m votes in last month’s parliamentary election because of fraud or other irregularities.
The number of void votes amounts to almost a quarter of the nearly 5.6m ballots cast in the 18 September poll.
Turnout was around 40% in the election for the lower house of parliament.
It will take some weeks before final results are released because more than 200 candidates are being investigated for fraud.
And the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission is investigating more than 4,000 formal complaints.
“Turnout is around 5,600,000, the valid vote is 4,265,347, and the invalid vote is around 1,300,000,” Fazil Ahmad Manawi, head of the IEC, said on Wednesday.
The BBC’s Paul Wood in Kabul says despite all this, there will probably be no rush to condemnation by the international community.
Ultimately, these elections’ measure of success will be how they affect the stability of the country.
There was widespread intimidation during the election, with Taliban insurgents threatening voters not to take part.
President Karzai’s position is not threatened by the results.
It is an outcome that Nato and the international community can live with and so these elections will no doubt be judged a success, concludes our correspondent.
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