Background note on United Nations involvement in audit of Presidential election 2014

22 Sep 2014

Background note on United Nations involvement in audit of Presidential election 2014

KABUL - Prompted by legitimate concerns of serious fraud, significant in scope and sophistication, the United Nations was jointly requested by the two Presidential candidates, and also separately by the authorities of Afghanistan, to provide international supervision of the audit of results from the 14 June Presidential run-off. The world body agreed to take on this responsibility in order to help the country and the Afghan people return to the path of unity, stability, prosperity and peace.

This unprecedented audit was designed with the assistance of senior United Nations experts in accordance with international best practice and standards to be comprehensive, meticulous and credible. Other parts of the international community were asked to provide professional electoral observers and to help retrieve all of the 22,828 ballot boxes from the country’s 34 provinces to be audited in Kabul. The international community rapidly met the candidates’ request by mobilising significant resources to establish a multi-tiered system of international observation and supervision of the audit, which included hundreds of observers, electoral advisors and the United Nations’ leading and senior-most electoral experts.
 
In fulfilling its requested role, the United Nations fully respected the requirement of the 12 July Agreement to consult with both parties, as well as the legal mandate of the IEC and the laws and Constitution of Afghanistan.
 
The most consequential of the United Nations proposals related to developing criteria for the invalidation and recount of ballot boxes. It was necessary to strike a proper balance between the imperative to excise fraud from the electoral process while also preserving legitimate votes. The enthusiastic participation by millions of Afghan men and women in the elections in the face of insecurity and attacks meant that finding the right balance was important to honour their determination and courage and for the sake of future Afghan elections.
 
The United Nations proposal was developed by United Nations election experts after extensive consultations with the two campaigns and followed the best practice principle that decisions on invalidations should be based on thorough examination of physical and visual evidence, in a transparent and rules-based process. In past Afghan polls, time and operational constraints forced election officials to rely on statistical trends to extrapolate the extent of fraud. By contrast, this audit entailed all 22,828 boxes being transported to Kabul and opened and investigated in front of observers, candidate agents and the media, allowing invalidations to be based on evidence rather than statistics. This approach was more thorough, technically intrusive and credible.
 
While many elements were agreed in direct consultation, the candidates acknowledged that they would not be able to agree on all the rules of the election and requested the United Nations to define the final technical parameters of the audit.  Some of the candidates’ proposals, notably those that did not correspond with best practice or the evidence-based approach proposed by the UN, could not be included. Ultimately, in their signed joint communique of 8 August, the two campaigns agreed to "practically move the audit process forward based on the United Nations criteria including for audit, recount, and invalidation."

Joint Responsibility

In accordance with the 12 July Agreement, the United Nations ensured that the two campaigns had joint oversight and responsibility for the audit process.
 
It established an Audit Management Committee where the two campaigns, the IEC and UN technical advisors met on a daily basis. Through this forum the campaigns had the opportunity to give advice and make proposals on a wide variety of technical, logistical and security issues related to the audit, many of which have subsequently been implemented.
 
The candidates were further given direct opportunity to propose inquiries and, in some cases, co-design procedures for some of the most innovative aspects of the audit. These included the special scrutiny of the 6,000 boxes for which the two campaigns had the greatest concerns of fraud and the establishment of special review panels to investigate claims of similar signatures on results sheets (SSRS) from different polling centres.
 
Under the special scrutiny procedure, each campaign nominated up to 3,000 boxes that would receive not just a standard audit, but automatic full recounts. The claims of SSRS meanwhile required a distinct approach from the main audit, which had focused upon a polling station-by-polling station examination of the contents of individual ballot boxes. In response to the claims first raised by the Reform and Partnership team, the UN worked with the IEC to adopt new regulations and establish review panels to examine claims that similar signatures were present on sets of results sheets that spanned multiple polling centres. Where these review panels verified these claims and corroborating evidence of fraud was found, the affected ballot boxes were recommended for invalidation.
 
Finally, in order to promote confidence in the audit, agents of the two campaigns were given an unprecedented role in the physical auditing of ballot boxes. In a normal audit both the observers and the candidate agents are kept physically separate from the audit tables and not allowed to handle ballots or other sensitive materials. Until the withdrawal of the Reform and Partnership team from the audit on 27 August, the two agent teams and IEC staff jointly conducted the audit, with campaign teams directing the placement of ballots into patterns of similar markings prior to technical review and dispute resolution by UN advisors.

Audit Results

The audit process entailed the nationwide audit of the ballot boxes of all 22,828 polling stations open for the 14 June run-off. Where the audit uncovered hard evidence of fraud, these ballots were invalidated. The findings from these physical audits where then adjudicated upon by the IEC using UN-proposed recount and invalidation criteria.

The IEC on 21 September announced the outcome of the elections with Dr. Ghani being elected President.  The IEC provided a full breakdown of the results to both candidates from the presidential run-off and underscored its  committment to publish the full results at the earliest time. The IEC had earlier issued a significant number of public decisions on whether the run-off votes from each polling station should be validated, invalidated or subject to a recount. The findings were: polling stations requiring recount, 9,677; validated 11,945; invalidated 1,206.

On 26 September the IEC certified that Dr. Ghani had secured 55.27 per cent of the ballot - 3,935,567 votes on a turn-out of 7.12 million voters.

The audit and invalidation of many hundreds of thousands of ballots also confirmed significant fraud and weaknesses in the electoral process. There is the pressing need for fundamental electoral reform and both parties in the government of national unity are committed to implementing such reforms without delay. The United Nations stands ready to assist in this process if requested.