Fraud surrounds women voters in Afghan election

[unhappycamper]

Fraud surrounds women voters in Afghan election
By HEIDI VOGT
Associated Press Writer
Oct 30, 4:43 PM EDT

KABUL (AP) -- One man cast 35 votes for female relatives. Others lugged in sacks full of voting cards they said were from women. And in a village of just 250 people, 200 women supposedly voted in three hours.

In Afghanistan's recent presidential election in August, one of the ripest areas for fraud was women's voting. And the same is likely to be true again in the Nov. 7 runoff between President Hamid Karzai and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.

The stakes are high. The Obama administration, which pushed Karzai to accept the runoff vote, is hoping it will restore legitimacy to a government that has been undermined by blatant ballot-box stuffing and Karzai's long delay in accepting fraud rulings that forced the runoff.

Yet the problems of fraud related to women's voting cannot be changed in a few weeks. There's widespread acceptance of proxy voting by male relatives. Many women are reluctant to vote given threats of violence and polling centers swarming with men. And those who do cast ballots are usually uneducated and therefore more easily manipulated.

It's unclear how large an impact fraud involving women voters had on the results because Afghan election officials have not released the list of women's polling stations. But many observers have said that women's polling stations were more problematic than men's.


Rest of article at: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_AFGHAN_ELECTION_WOMEN?SITE=DCSAS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-10-30-14-06-16