UPDATE:  Afghanistan's Electoral Complaint Commission has ordered an audit/recount in response to "Clear and convincing evidence of fraud."

 In the lore of American elections, Cook county, Illinois looms large.  Cook county, according the legends, if not in fact, always reported the returns of elections last--despite being in the City of Chicago.  Rural backwaters and the suburbs would report the returns and then after every other vote was counted, Cook county would report returns giving the winning margin to whatever candidate the machine favored.

I have a concern that Afghanistan's version of Cook county is in the provinces of Farah, Nimroz, Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul, Khost and Paktika.

What causes this concern of mine is not just that those areas are the last places to report returns or that they going to Karzai in a range of 70% to 83% but that Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission still has not released the total turn out number nationally or by province.

Take a look at this interactive map .  (Update: most of this post uses Sunday/Monday's numbers.  An update is added at the end)

If the number of total ballots cast is announced, it makes it much, much harder for counting fraud to be carried out.  But as it stands now, ballots can be added after the fact to create the winning margin.

In Afghanistan the ballots are in printed in the form of a bound tablet similar to a legal pad.  Individual ballots are tore off and handed to the voter.

After the polls close and the counting begins, the first step is to count the total number of ballots.  This is done by counting those in the clear plastic tub and comparing that to the number of tablets used and ballot pages remaining.

The ballots are extremely large owing to the 40 Presidential candidates.  Counting is done by hand.  These two factors make the counting process slow and difficult.  But, the total number of ballots cast should have been known within 48 hours.  It should have been the first solid number reported by the polling stations and the IEC.

But more than two weeks later, it is not published.

If the number of ballots cast is published immediately, the fraud is limited to percentages and more easily detected.  In other words, the candidate benefiting from the fraud would have to get increasingly higher percentages from the Cook county style provinces and even then, he still might not get enough.

Corrupt election officials could over report voting, but would be limited still to plausibility--no one would believe 100% turn out in Kandahar.

In the 2004 Presidential election there were 308,896 total valid votes in Kandahar province.  Karzai got 91% of the vote in the province.

Without the hard tally of total votes, corrupt officials can keep adding the total number of votes in-line with plausible percentages, and deliver the winning margin.

The hard turn out numbers are ideal, but with the data the IEC has already published and little math, we can improve our chances of detecting brazen fraud.

The province with the most Cook county potential is Kandahar.

Currently Karzai is leading with 82.3% of the vote with 30.9% of the polling stations tallied in Kandahar.

There are 87 polling centers in Kandahar province that have reported in.  By this listing 245 total polling centers and 1,545 polling stations were open on election day .  The actual count is by polling stations.  Some polling centers have up to 8 polling stations.

This listing shows 1,283 polling stations.

So far there are 78,833 valid votes cast, Karzai has 64,901 of them. (Sunday's numbers)

The average turnout so far is 906 votes per polling center or 213 votes per polling station.  If this number goes up dramatically, it is evidence something unusual is happening.

That would lead to an estimated 221,970 valid votes in Kandahar province.  Considering that turnout was reported to be almost non-existent in Kandahar province, even the 30% reduction from the turnout in the 2004 elections should raise eyebrows.  If the final number greatly exceeds the prediced number of votes, it is evidence of the Cook county effect.

If Karzai holds steady at 82.3%, he will pick up another 104,000 votes in Kandahar.

Now, here is where the fraud detection math comes in.  (This is also where I go out on a limb into a broad generalization instead of sitting around for a few days crunching all the numbers.)

Nationwide 4,295,326 valid votes have been cast.

74.2% of all polling stations have been tallied.

26,275 polling stations were open.  19,496 have been tallied.

So far, the average is 220 votes per polling station for a wild ass guess prediction of 5,780,500 total votes.

Karzai is on track to pick up 2,809,323.  He needs 2,896,030 to win outright and avoid the runoff. 

The best places for him to close the gap are Kandahar, Paktika and Khost provinces.  If the number of votes cast starts greatly exceeding the current predictions in those provinces, then you have a good notion that the Cook county effect is in play.

There is also an indicator of some type of effect in play.

On August 25th, with 10% of the polling stations reporting, Karzai had 41.8% of the vote.

On August 27th, 17.2% of the polling stations had been tallied.  Karzai was winning with 44.8%.

On August 28th , with 35% of stations reporting, Karzai had 46.3% and on September 3rd he was up to 47.3% with 60% of the polling stations tallied.

Karzai now has 48.6% with 74.2% of polling stations reporting. (Sunday's numbers)

The only public poll prior to the election showed Karzai getting 44% of the vote.

The statistical jumps are slowing, but by the time 35% of polling stations are reported, even if it is not truly random, it is large enough to make an accurate projection from.

A jump from 46.3% to 47.3 to 48.6% is highly unlikely.

If the total gets to 50.1% the explanation is most likely found in this New York Times report .

The Times cites western officials who say "only about 25,000 people actually voted there."

By the calculations above, the turnout will be reported at 221,970.  The Times reports it could be more than 350,000, exceeding the turnout in the 2004 election, which would be some brazen fraud.

Kandahar is looking like it could be Afghanistan's Cook county.

UPDATE: 

Right before I went to post this blog, the IEC updated their statistics.  Karzai now leads with 54.1%.

Where did all those votes come from?  Lets look at the recent numbers from Kandahar.

With 61% of the polling stations tallied, there are supposedly 208,045 valid votes cast.

By the reporting yesterday, there were 213 votes per polling station.  Today that average is up to 263 votes per polling station.  Or, more accurately for our puposes, the most recent 386 stations , accounting for 129,212 votes, reported and an average of 334 total votes.

The uptick is just as I predicted would be seen if there was brazen fraud of the Cook county style.

Kandahar is now on track to have a supposed turnout of between 337,429 and 375,091.

Yesterday my prediction was for 221,970.

The same trends are showing up in Paktika and Khost provinces.

(The companion photo essay and videoclips to this story can be found here .)

 I could hear Kabul, the cacophony of car horns, traffic cops yelling through bull horns, screeches, engines.

But I could not see Kabul.  I could not feel Kabul.

I was sitting in the courtyard of the Serena Hotel under a pine tree.  The padded outdoor chair was comfortable.  The view of the rose bushes and manicured lawn was delightful.

Inside, the hotel was truly five-star quality.  Quite possibly one of the finest hotels I have ever been in and the best I have ever stayed the night in.

The food was safe for even the most delicate westerners.  The linens were clean.  The thick terry cloth robe and slippers were perfect.

I was in a bubble.  A bubble many westerners find themselves in.  They live in compounds or FOBs or fine hotels.  They move about the city behind tinted bullet proof glass.

They are floating above Kabul, not in Kabul.  I was at the Serena to bring a little Kabul and Afghanistan into the bubble and film some of the goings on inside the bubble.

The preferred vehicle to float above Kabul in is the armored Land Cruiser .

The parking lots of the major hotels--Serena, Safi, Intercontinental--are filled with them and former British Paratroopers, SAS, US Rangers and Special Forces who ride shotgun in them.

US Soldiers can spend a lot of time in the bubble--in MRAPS.  In Iraq, it took a deliberate effort from some officers to get their troops out of the bubble and out on their feet where they could gather intel, interact with the people and actually provide security to the population.

Lt. Colonel Scott Cunningham of the 1-221 Cav. made an astute point to me a few weeks ago about the bubble.

Green trucks with guys in the back manning PKM machine guns wearing baclavas raced into the parking lot of the Herat airport.

That is never a good sign. 

They were special officers of the Directorate of National Security.  Something was up.

Dr. Christine Fair   and I were on our way out of Herat taking the evening Pamir Airways flight.  Dr. Fair and I are working with the same client organization and it made more logistical and security sense to have us as passengers on the same flight out of Herat.

Of course like many things in Afghanistan, it was not immediately apparant what a passenger should do.

I went in first to recon while Christine stayed behind with the drivers and British gunslingers.  Even in an airport like Herat there is security.  I stepped through the metal detector and then was throughly patted down by a guy who seemed to really enjoy giving men a hand search.

Once inside it smelled like Afghanistan.

If the four pillars of Herat mark the historic gateway to Afghanistan...the Herat airport marks a clogged up escape valve.

The four pillars of Herat that mark the historical gateway to Afghanistan.

There are actually three or four elections today, depending on the region and province.  Some places went smooth.  Others...well.

Here's a link to Mullah Todd's tracker .  Todd is in Jalalabad.

In a day or two all the international election monitoring groups will issue statements and preliminary reports.

International groups ranging from the EU, NDI, IRI, DI and others were out in force today.  Most them have expansive networks of Afghans reporting what happened throughout the country.

Any irregularities are being documented and will be reported.

I spent the day filming in Kabul.  I heard one rocket--a small one--impact near where I was drinking a Coke Light (Diet Coke) and taking some notes.

Traffic light, turnout was low, apathy was high in Kabul.

Here are some photos from the last polling place I visited and got to watch some of the counting.

Outside of polling place in central Kabul

Elections workers all wore official vests

Kabul is quiet for now.

The streets which are normally teaming are not empty, but the buzz of the city is muted.

The normal background noise, usually pumped up to 11, is only at 2 or 3.

People are getting out to vote in the city.

In Afghanistan repeat voters are prevented by the dipping a finger in ink and a triangle punch on the voting ID card.

The fear is corrupt/incompetent poll workers not punching cards or ensuring the ink dip is used.

Then with a enough corrupt workers in an area, and enough motivated partisans the times a person could vote are only limited by hours in the day.

Afghanistan is not known for its civic integrity in, well, anything.

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Kabul--The streets were empty today, which is disconcerting for two reasons.  The first is that the Kabul streets are always congested.  But today a person could actually move around the city at decent speed in vehicle--something I have never experienced.  I barely recognized the city without the traffic jams.

The second is from my personal history.  The two times I was in Iraq and the streets were empty bad things happened.

I will be tasked with visiting and filming polling sites Thursday.  There are a lot of people who don't want to go to what are considered target sites.  So I will go instead.  It is what I do.

A few bombs will go off tomorrow for the benefit of the international news media.  They will be deadly.  Innocent people exercising their civic rights to vote will be killed.  Many more will be maimed.

There is not tactical advantage for the Taliban in blowing up a polling site.  The people killed by the Taliban are likely to be normal Muslim Afghans.

But the Taliban's agenda requires headlines and gross ratings points to fuel their dream--the departure of International Forces and their return to power.

A few weeks ago I was talking with a US military officer about the situation here.  I told him a fact he already knows--the Taliban and other groups cannot expel the International Coalition.  The Taliban cannot even topple the pathetic Karzai regime.

Then I told him who could expel NATO and the International Coalition--me.  The news media.  The politicians of the Coalition nations.  The voters.

The goal of the bombs on election day are not to disrupt the elections--they are to earn gross ratings points that Afghanistan is too far gone to repair, that it is not worth it.  The elections just guarantee plenty of media coverage and extra gross ratings points. 

The polling places open in a few hours.

I'll file reports as I can.

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