Afghan officials confident of tallying

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — In a largely illiterate country where donkeys delivered ballots to remote areas, Afghan officials say they are confident that algorithms, double-blind computer entries and other modern methods will catch 90 percent of the fraud from last week’s presidential election.

Accusations of ballot-box stuffing and voter intimidation have streamed in to the independent Electoral Complaints Commission since Thursday’s vote — most of them filed by President Hamid Karzai’s main rival, ex-Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.

Forty-five of the complaints are serious enough that they could affect the election outcome, said Grant Kippen, the head of the U.N.-backed body.

Nevertheless, Ajmal Amin Rabmal, one of three experts overseeing the commission’s computer monitoring, said he’s confident his team can spot fraud cases, using techniques that hardly fit the image of a country where ballots were marked with the candidates’ faces and symbols to help the 75 percent of Afghans who can’t read and write.

“Ninety percent [of fraud] we are going to catch,” Rabmal said Monday.

International officials have cautioned candidates and their supporters to hold off on victory claims until the votes are in and the fraud claims resolved. But the advice has not always been heeded.

On Monday, Finance Minister Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal said Karzai handily won with close to 70 percent of the vote, according to Zakhilwal’s top adviser, Najibullah Manalay. The claim, which relied on information from Karzai’s campaign team, was made at a private dinner one day before the first preliminary election results are due to be released and weeks before a winner is officially declared.

“According to this information President Karzai has won, but nobody in Afghanistan can officially announce any figures except for the election commission, so as I told you, the figures presented in this meeting had no official value,” Manalay said.

A spokesman for Abdullah dismissed the claim and said it was aimed at swaying Afghan opinion.

Claims and counterclaims have added to the mounting questions about the election’s credibility, which are threatening to undermine President Barack Obama’s Afghan strategy. The Obama administration hopes the election will produce a leader with a strong mandate to confront the Taliban insurgency.