The Times
Jerome Starkey in Kabul

Women’s votes are the focus of an investigation in Afghanistan after it emerged that thousands of ballots were cast at women-only polling stations in a province with only one female election worker.

Female turnout across the most dangerous and conservative parts of the country appeared suspiciously high, officials have told The Times.

The investigation comes after reports of widespread fraud in the registration process, in which men allegedly registered millions of “phantom” female relatives.

The UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), which has overall responsibility for the investigation, ordered the country’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) to conduct a comprehensive audit of its staff amid allegations that they were complicit in the fraud. The ECC also ordered a partial recount.

A British official said: “If there’s going to be a recount done properly then they need to look at the staff as well, because in a lot of cases the fraud was being done by the IEC officials.”

Strict cultural norms mean that women cannot vote in male-only stations, but in Paktika province, where there was only one female official, scores of women-only polling stations returned thousands of suspect votes. Across the province, President Karzai won 91.7 per cent of more than 215,000 ballots.

“There were a number of reports of proxy voting in Paktika,” said Shaharzad Akbar, a senior analyst with the Afghan Free and Fair Elections Foundation. “Our observers didn’t see any female IEC employees and female turnout was particularly low.”

But results sheets seen by The Times show that thousands of women’s votes were sent to Kabul and in some cases the turnout almost matched that of the men. One rural polling station reported precisely 600 votes, all for Mr Karzai. Its sister polling station, for women, reported exactly 300 votes, also all in favour of Mr Karzai. (Read more)