The Council of Presidential Candidates has issued a statement on Tuesday in Afghanistan accusing the presumptive front-runners, President Ashraf Ghani and CEO Abdullah Abdullah of both engaging in large-scale electoral fraud.



The other candidates are objecting to the inclusion of votes cast without any biometric devices, saying that such votes are fake. Previous reports also suggested that the non-biometric votes were predominantly for Ghani.



This adds up to about one million votes overall that are contested, which is nearly half of all the votes even cast in this election, the lowest turnout ever for an Afghanistan election.



Ghani and Abdullah have both claimed victory. They have been expected to be the top two candidates this time around as well. In the previous election, the US managed to resolve election fraud disputes between the two by creating the CEO position for Abdullah, allowing both to nominally win and share power.



Both claimed victory more or less immediately after the vote ended, even though exit polling didn’t generally support anyone having a majority. Though it is expected that soon Afghan officials will release an official count, a run-off seems all but certain.



Author: Jason Ditz Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com. View all posts by Jason Ditz