The moment Grant Kippen realized the extent of fraud in Afghanistan's presidential election came when he reached his hand into an unusually heavy ballot box in Kandahar province last week.
The Ottawa native, who currently chairs Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission, had expected to find 600 ballots, the maximum number of votes allowed in a single box.
“In that particular one I found seventeen hundred. The majority were for Mr. Karzai,” recalled Mr. Kippen in a telephone interview with The Globe And Mail Wednesday.
It was the most egregious example of a broader pattern that emerged as Mr. Kippen travelled to Afghanistan's volatile southern provinces of Kandahar, Paktika and Ghazni last week to begin probing thousands of allegations of voting-day irregularities.
“Based on what we've found in those provinces, there were obviously irregularities,” Mr. Kippen said, emphasizing that his team's investigation had just begun. However, the initial evidence of ballot-box stuffing was so overwhelming it prompted the complaints commission to order a partial recount of suspect ballot boxes, a process that cast Afghanistan into a period of political drift.
The process will ultimately determine the winner of last month's bitterly contested presidential election.
Mr. Kippen, who held the same job when Afghans voted in a parliamentary election in 2005, is keenly aware of the crucial role his commission is playing this time around, with the latest preliminary ballot count suggesting Hamid Karzai has narrowly won the majority of votes – 54.1 per cent – to secure a second term.
Asked if his commission's findings would swing the outcome of the tally, Mr. Kippen replied: “I guess that's a possibility. It's too early to tell.”
Grant Kippen, chairman of the country's Electoral Complaints Commission, makes his way to a meeting with his Afghan counterparts under the watchful eye of an armed guard at the commission's headquarters in Kabul.
Figures from European election observers suggest that Mr. Karzai's win could be compromised if fraudulent voting they witnessed on the Aug. 20 ballot is discounted.
If the commission throws out enough ballot boxes to suppress Mr. Karzai's lead below 50 per cent, it would force a second ballot with the Afghan President's nearest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, who currently holds 28.3 per cent of the vote.
Mr. Kippen's commission also has the power to call for an entirely new vote, if electoral fraud proves to have seriously marred the election.
“We would have to have pretty convincing evidence that around the country [fraud] happened. I wouldn't even want to speculate on that scenario. It's way too early to say,” he said.
He sought to play down outside speculation that the Independent Election Commission, the Afghan body conducting the vote tally, would undermine the ECC by declaring a winner before the fraud is fully investigated.
“Nothing has led us to believe that. This audit and recount is being done with their co-operation. According to the law we have to complete our investigation before they announce a winner. There is no reason to assume they're going to do anything otherwise,” he said.
Mr. Kippen said he was not surprised at the number of complaints of vote-rigging his office has received.
“When we started planning, we prepared ourselves to receive 4,000 complaints. At the moment we've received 2,300,” he said. In 2005, with a 70-per-cent voter turnout, the ECC received 1,500 complaints. Observers have estimated a 35- to 40-per-cent turnout in last month's election.
“It's not really that surprising in terms of the complaints we get in. It's not surprising because this was a very contested election. I wouldn't say we're shocked at all. ...We are just approaching all of this in a very systematic way,” he said.
Mr. Kippen acknowledged that final results from the presidential election would be delayed as his investigation widens. Next week, his team will travel to the northern provinces, Dr. Abdullah's traditional stronghold, where irregularities could prove to have swung the vote in the challenger's favour.
“To what extent the results will be delayed, we just don't know. We had to make a conscious decision. To do this job properly it will take more time,” he said.
Wednesday, William Crosbie, Canada's new ambassador to Afghanistan, joined the chorus of other Western leaders calling for a probe of fraud allegations.
“As the tallying portion of the election process draws to a close, Canada urges the Independent Election Commission and Electoral Complaints Commission to thoroughly investigate allegations of irregularities and exclude all fraudulent votes,” Mr. Crosbie said in a statement.
Mr. Kippen described the mood in his office as “nose to the grindstone.”
“We've got our heads down trying to get through all of the complaints. There's a lot of work ahead of us, but we are going to approach it methodically and get it done.”
