Afghanistan's voting process just doesn't add up

President Hamid Karzai. Photo / AP

KABUL: 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 November 7 run-off between President Hamid Karzai and former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.

The stakes are high.

The Obama administration, which pushed Karzai to accept the run-off 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 run-off.

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 centres swarming with men.

And those who do cast ballots are usually uneducated and therefore more easily manipulated.

It is 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.

In August, men showed up with fistfuls of female voter cards and poll workers allowed them to cast multiple ballots without argument, according to a UN report.

In some cases, men dragged in sacks full of cards supposedly for female relatives, Afghan monitors said.

Empty women's polling stations also provided reams of blank ballots to unscrupulous local officials.

"It allowed for women's votes to be manipulated. Block voting, proxy voting, or there were just no women at the polling stations and those ballots were used for fraudulent votes," said Theresa Delangis, part of a team working on election issues with the UN women's fund.

Afghanistan is no safer now than two months ago and there still aren't enough female poll workers.