IEC Afternoon Press Conference Notes

KABUL, Sept 18 - Fazal Ahmad Manawi, the chairman of Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission, gave a second press conference this afternoon to discuss Election Day after polls closed. Our notes follow:

Some numbers

In 2,627 polling centers, with about 5,204,114 estimated voters, 1,689,457 voters had cast their votes by midday. That is 32 percent of the total estimated voters in the mentioned polling centers.

Polling centers:

• 5,355 were reported as open
• 153 polling centers are reported closed
• 542 polling centers had not provided information about whether they had opened or not.

Security is the main reason for the closed polling centers. However, in two polling centers of the Qarabagh district of Ghazni province IEC had been unable to deliver polling materials due to bad weather. Thus, they remained close.

Accreditation:

• 369,813 accreditations were distributed to agents of the candidates
• 281,306 of these were agents of male candidates
• 88,507 were agents of female candidates.

Furthermore, minor irregularities have occurred: IEC has registered those and will take appropriate action. Some powerful candidates have threatened and intimidated IEC staff and IEC has registered the incident and will take appropriate action. Also some campaigning has occurred in the polling centers.

There have been many incidents that fake cards have attempted to be used. The security officials have arrested some individuals involved with this issue. The police have asked IEC what to do with these people. The IEC has advised the police to detain these people until the end of the day and until the IEC in correspondence with ECC would reach to an agreement on what to do with them.

The official polling day ended at 4:00 PM. However, in some polling centers where ballots had finished during the day the polling day had been extended unto 4:30 PM.

Today a joint IEC press conference with the minister of interior, minister of defense, and possibly with spokesperson for the ISAF will be held at the IEC headquarters and further details and particularly security details will be provided.