NO. 166 | August 2020

PEACEWORK

Assessing Afghanistan’s 2019 

Presidential Election

By Colin Cookman
NO. 166 | August 2020

The views expressed in this report are those of the author alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of

the United States Institute of Peace. An online edition of this and related reports can be found on our website 

(www.usip.org), together with additional information on the subject.

© 2020 by the United States Institute of Peace

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Peaceworks No. 166. First published 2020.

ISBN: 978-1-60127-820-3

DEMOCRACY & 

GOVERNANCE

ABOUT THE REPORT

Drawing on an original set of Afghanistan elections data, this report analyzes the 

September 2019 Afghan presidential election, focusing on questions related to access

to the elections, the counting and vote invalidation process, and political trends compared to the 2018 parliamentary and 2014 presidential elections. Work was supported 

by the Afghanistan program at the United States Institute of Peac

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Colin Cookman is a program officer at the United States Institute of Peace, where h

supports the research and publications portfolio for the Asia Center. He previously 

served as a member of Afghan election observation missions with Democracy International in 2010 and 2014, as a contributing writer with the Economist Intelligence Unit,

and as a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress. 

Cover photo: An Afghan man marks a ballot at a polling station in Kabul during the 

September 28, 2019 presidential election. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
USIP.ORG 1

Contents

3 Introduction

6 Background Context of Afghanistan’s 2019 Election

9 Assessing Access to the Vote

21 Counting, Auditing, and Validating the Vote

33 Analyzing Political Trends in the Results Data

45 Conclusion
2 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

Summar

Afghanistan’s current electoral system structures Afghan political competition, 

shapes election-day outcomes, and exists in relation to—or at a disconnect from—

other processes of competition between organized interest groups in Afghanistan. 

Drawing on a unique set of results data from the September 2019 presidential

election and past elections, this report analyzes where and how prospective 

Afghan voters were able to participate in the 2019 polls, the decision making behind and adjudication of disputes over which votes would be counted as valid, and 

how the available results compare with political trends evident in prior elections.

Many factors, including worsening security, polling center closures, tighter voter 

registration requirements, and modest campaign mobilization efforts, all combined to produce an outcome that suggests Afghan public participation in the 

2019 presidential election fell to the lowest levels observed in the past fifteen 

years, raising serious questions as to the representativeness of the current political order. New reform measures offer the potential for greater confidence than in 

past elections in the integrity and validity of the final 2019 vote figures, but these 

controls also pose an accessibility trade-off. Discrepancies and transparency 

gaps still persist around some of the key decisions made on the part of electoral 

administration authorities to obtain the final results.

The electoral system codified in Afghanistan’s 2004 constitution is not accepted

as the primary means for apportioning decision-making power and authority in 

Afghanistan; rather, the election results mark a first step toward negotiations and 

renegotiations over sharing power and decision-making authorities. Resolving 

the conflict in Afghanistan will ultimately require reaching consensus among all 

major Afghan political actors on how to establish a new agreement on the rules 

for allocating political power within the country.
USIP.ORG 3

Since the overthrow of Afghanistan’s last monarchy in 1973, the country has experienced chronic political instability, including a military coup, violent insurgencies,

foreign interventions, and civil war. Throughout this unsettled period, the country’s

major political actors, including those based both inside and outside Afghanistan, 

have sought to leverage different sources of power in order to claim representation 

within existing political systems, force changes to those systems, and build new ones. 

Although the particular identities, interests, and claims to legitimacy of these actors 

have varied widely, disputes over governing power and process represent the core 

source of continued conflict for the past several decades.

The lack of agreed-upon rules for structuring political competition in predictable

ways has been both a product of and a contributing factor to the lack of trust among 

rival political actors.1

 In the absence of any enduring consensus on how decisions 

should be made or confidence in how those decisions are likely to be made in the 

near future, the competing interest groups in Afghanistan have relied on strategies of 

maximalist political brinkmanship at best, and at worst the frequent use of organized 

violence as a means of extracting concessions from or forcing aside their opponents.

Men line up outside a polling station in western Herat city, waiting to cast votes during the September 28, 2019 election. (Photo by Hamed Sarfarazi/A

The electoral system 

and the constitution 

that undergirds it 

are not accepted 

as the exclusive or 

even primary means 

for apportioning 

decision-making 

power and authority 

in Afghanistan. . . . 

But elections remain 

an important and 

understudied part

of the Afghan

political system.

Introduction
4 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

The formulation and adoption in January 2004 of the

current Afghan constitution, and the presidential election that was subsequently held under that framework 

in October 2004, were a major step toward formalizing 

the proposition that mass franchise elections should 

form the primary system through which political power 

is distributed in Afghanistan. But the highly centralized 

Afghan presidential structure has significantly heightened the stakes for a presidential electoral win or loss, 

and the constitution has thus far produced only one 

transfer of executive power from an incumbent to a 

successor (through term limits rather than an electoral loss).2 The use of the single non-transferable vote

system for parliamentary elections has produced a 

fragmented legislative body with weak representative 

connections to other established political organizations; few meaningful powers are endowed on parliament under the constitution to begin with.3

Although metrics for turnout are not directly comparable across election cycles owing to differing voter registration requirements and differing criteria for assessing whether a vote is valid or fraudulent, a persistent 

downward trend in voter participation appears clear 

across the years since 2004, reaching a nadir in the 

most recent elections. This decline has been driven at

least to some degree by the Taliban’s general rejection

of the electoral process, which Taliban communications

characterize as a façade for legitimating leaders selected by S and international forces, and by the violen

expansion of Taliban territorial and political control over

parts of the country during the past decade and a half 

of the insurgency.4

On the international side, progressively increased levels of investment in the post-2001 Afghan state-building project have been accompanied by expectations 

that elections will be regularly held as a means of 

providing legitimating signals both domestically and 

internationally. With these expectations have also come 

greater external scrutiny of the administration of elections and greater sensitivity to allegations of fraud and 

mismanagement. But the formal electoral process has 

also often been disconnected from the security priorities that still constitute the primary reason for external 

interest in Afghanistan. Efforts to achieve those priorities are driven to a great degree through partnerships 

with local leaders and factions that are seen as able 

to directly support international security objectives, regardless of their standing in relationship to the electoral process or other Afghan domestic constituencies.5

The electoral system and the constitution that undergirds it are not accepted as the exclusive or even

primary means for apportioning decision-making power 

and authority in Afghanistan, even by the domestic candidates who contest the polls or the international sponsors who fund the administration of the elections and 

the state. But elections remain an important and understudied part of the Afghan political system. There are

compelling values-based reasons to support the goal 

of establishing the popular franchise in Afghanistan 

and to allow Afghan citizens, both men and women, to 

have a direct voice in choosing the leaders who will 

represent them in a democratic republican framework. 

There are also strong reasons for supporting such a

system as the best available means for structuring political competition in a way that reflects the diversity of 

political interest groups within the country and avoids 

the destructive outcomes that Afghanistan has faced 

over the past many years. Electoral institutions, contested as they have been for the past decade and a half, 

have played important roles in shaping the contours of 

formal political competition in Afghanistan, even if they 

have not fixed the boundaries of authority through their 

outcomes alone.

The rules and systems governing the administration

of elections are logistically and legally complex, but 

elections are not a “technical” process that can be 

divorced from politics in order to achieve an idealized 

neutral equilibrium. Decisions that alter access to the 

balloting process, fix the criteria for participating as 

a candidate or a voter, and set the authorities and 
USIP.ORG 5

processes for validating or invalidating a vote all shape 

the composition of the potential and actual electorate 

and have implications for determining the outcome of 

a given election. Establishing control or influence over 

this process is at least as critical for rival candidates as 

the voter mobilization campaign leading up to election 

day itself.6 Ultimately, the outcome of an election is determined by which votes are counted. In Afghanistan’s

case, the electoral outcomes have been only a first 

step toward shaping the contours of a continuing competition for power and influence.

While Afghan election officials and their international 

supporters have taken steps toward reform, the contemporary electoral process remains opaque in many key 

aspects, in part due to the limited information available 

to decision makers and analysts alike. The overall goal

of this report is to better understand how the current 

formal electoral system structures Afghan political 

competition, shapes election-day outcomes, and exists 

in relation to or at a disconnect from other processes 

of competition between organized interest groups in 

Afghanistan. More specifically, the report draws on an 

original set of electoral data—generated from official reporting and election observer sources and subsequently 

cleaned and restructured by the author—to conduct an 

exploratory analysis of the most recent, September 2019

Afghan presidential election, its administration, and the 

political trends that can be observed when compared 

to previous election cycles, including the parliamentary 

elections held in October 2018 and the last presidential 

election, held in the summer of 2014.7

This report focuses on three key questions: where and

how voters in the September 2019 presidential election

were able to access the ballot process; how the votes 

at these sites were counted, validated, or invalidated; 

and how the political preferences expressed in the 

counted votes compare with trends and patterns of 

support in previous elections. Key findings include 

significant reductions in access due to insurgent 

threats and a deterioration of government control, 

planned and unplanned closures of polling centers, 

and tighter voter registration requirements. Both of the 

leading candidates in the 2019 election, Ashraf Ghani

and Abdullah Abdullah, saw a loss of historical supporters as a result of these restrictions, although each 

was affected in different ways. While a few national 

political factions shifted their affiliations, an attenuated 

campaign period and the lowest vote share accorded 

to second-tier candidates in any Afghan presidential 

election to date produced an effective rerun of the 

two-person presidential runoff election in 2014, from 

which the incumbent president, Ghani, appears to have

benefited. New vote verification procedures appear to 

have strengthened the integrity of the final results, but 

at the cost of loss of broader access and the likely loss 

of participation by some unknown number of real voters. While the invalidation decisions made during the 

extended auditing and recount process disproportionately reduced President Ghani’s provisional vote totals

in 2019, they stopped short of overturning his slim 

margin over a 50 percent majority. Some of the key adjudication decisions that produced these results remain

opaque, and important unanswered gaps remain in 

the public information released by the Afghan election 

administration bodies. Third-time presidential runner-up

Abdullah rejected the outcome of this process, refusing 

to relinquish his claims to a share of the next government. Ultimately, the electoral process was resolved

only through a new power-sharing agreement. But its 

durability remains uncertain in light of both past tension 

over the implementation of the unity government 

formula and the prospect of new, broader negotiations 

with the Taliban insurgency over the future makeup of

the Afghan political system.

Decisions that alter access to the balloting process, fix the criteria for participating as a candidate or a voter, 

and set the authorities and processes for validating or invalidating a vote all shape the composition of the 

potential and actual electorate and have implications for determining the outcome of a given election.
6 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

Background Context of 

Afghanistan’s 2019 Election

Afghanistan has conducted six nationwide elections since 

the adoption of the 2004 constitution, with presidential 

and parliamentary races offset from each other by a year 

each time.8 The 2014 presidential election was the first in

which President Hamid Karzai, constrained by term limits, 

did not return as an incumbent. There followed a highstakes race to take control of the presidency after nearly

thirteen years under Karzai (including his tenure as leader 

of the interim government that preceded the constitution).

After no candidate met the 50 percent majority requirement in the first round of that election, held in April 2014, 

former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah (who was the 

runner-up to Karzai in the 2009 presidential election) and 

former finance minister Ashraf Ghani (who had finished

in fourth place in that race) competed in a second-round 

runoff election held in June 2014. Abdullah and his 

supporters disputed the outcome of the second round, 

alleging fraud in the preliminary results, which showed 

him losing to Ghani, and forced a UN-monitored audit o

the vote count.9 The dispute was ultimately resolved only

through direct mediation by then S Secretary of St

John Kerry, which led to a power-sharing agreement 

between Ghani as president and Abdullah in a new, extraconstitutional “chief executive” position as part of the

newly formed National Unity Government.

Ongoing disputes over the relative powers of the two 

leaders continued throughout the tenure of the unity 

government, particularly concerning appointments to 

government positions at the national and provincial level. 

Ghani took early steps to consolidate control over the

fiscal operations of the state, including a direct personal 

role in approving major procurement contracts.11 In 

Afghanistan’s impoverished war economy, access to 

government-controlled resources, employment, and 

other patronage connections represents a key concern for all political constituencies.12 Abdullah faced 

continual pressure from his supporters to extract more 

positions and concessions from Ghani; elements from

both factions also split off into new alternative coalitions 

and configurations several times over the course of the 

unity government’s existence.13 Late in his term, Ghani

increasingly took steps to push for control over ministries 

where he had previously ceded appointment discretion 

to Abdullah, and by the eve of the elections, Ghani was

explicit in his unwillingness to accept a replay of the 

“two-headed government” system.14 But for Abdullah, 

achieving anything short of the power-sharing concessions he had managed to secure after the 2014 election, 

whether through an electorally determined outcome 

or through other political processes, would represent a 

substantial loss for himself and his supporters.

A major component of the original unity government 

agreement in 2014 was a commitment to an electoral reform process, which proceeded fitfully over the 

course of the government’s first years in office as both 

sides again sought to wrest control of or otherwise 

exercise vetoes over the process. In September 2016,

President Ghani issued a new electoral law by executive decree (overriding parliamentary objections), and

in November 2016 new commissioners were appointed 

to Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission 

(IEC), which administers the election process, and 

the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), which is 
USIP.ORG 7

responsible for adjudicating election complaints.15 The

chairman of the IEC was replaced by Ghani again a

year later in November 2017.16

Amid the ongoing electoral reform debates and IEC 

shakeups, parliamentary elections were indefinitely 

postponed past the five-year expiration of parliament’s 

term in 2015. After multiple delays, these elections were 

finally held in October 2018.17 In part in response to 

allegations of fraud and mismanagement of the parliamentary elections, the results of which took six months 

to finalize, President Ghani issued another executive

order in February 2019 modifying Afghanistan’s electoral 

law again and firing all members of the IEC and ECC.18 At 

this point, the eighteen already registered presidential 

candidates nominated a pool of potential replacements 

and cast votes to select the new commissioners, with 

Ghani retaining final authority to decide whether a given

commissioner would be assigned to the IEC or ECC. The

new commission members and secretariat chiefs were 

ultimately appointed on March 3, 2019.19

Timelines for the presidential election were pushed back

multiple times, until preparations were ultimately finalized 

in late March 2019 for a September 28, 2019 election

date.20 President Ghani’s constitutional tenure expired on

May 21, 2019, but he remained in office, over the objection of his rivals, through the pre-election period, with 

the extension of his term endorsed by a Supreme Court

ruling in April 2019.21 Elections for provincial councils, district councils (which have never been elected or formed, 

despite being mandated under the 2004 constitution 

and as part of the 2014 National Unity Governmen

Agreement), and parliamentary elections for Ghazni province (which were not held in 2018, and whose 2010 elected representatives continue to sit in parliament) were

Afghan security personnel and foreign forces secure the site of an attack in Kabul, on July 28, 2019. Political offices of the president’s running mate, 

former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, were hit by a large explosion and stormed by an unknown number of attackers. (Photo by Rahmat Gul/AP
8 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

originally proposed to take place simultaneously with 

the presidential election.22 However, in late May 2019, 

IEC chair Hawa Alam Nuristani announced that plans for 

those elections would be dropped, and as of this writing 

no new date has been offered for them.23

Negotiations between S diplomats and Taliban representatives in Qatar, and the possibility of a new power-sharing negotiation between Afghan factions as 

outcome of those talks, overshadowed preparations for 

the elections in the international policymaker community and among many Afghan political elites.24 President 

Ghani insisted that the elections proceed as scheduled, and rejected alternative proposals for an interim

government sought by his rivals; for Ghani, reelection

was a crucial step toward reasserting his legitimacy 

and authority in the eyes of the international community, his domestic political challengers, and the Taliban.

Public mobilization activities by most of the candidates 

were limited for much of the official campaign period as 

Abdullah and other candidates sought to pursue alternative paths to power and the international community 

was split on which diplomatic track to prioritize.25 With 

the temporary collapse of US-Taliban talks in ear

September 2019 (they resumed only toward the end

of the year), Ghani’s insistence on moving forward with

the election carried the day.26

After the presidential election was held in September,

tabulation and finalization of the results were delayed 

for several months as officials sought to resolve discrepancies between separate vote-reporting streams and 

address complaints over disputed votes. New biometric 

verification requirements led to heightened scrutiny 

and debate over what constituted a proper valid vote. 

The finalization of the results—with very minor changes—came only in mid-February 2020, just prior to the

finalization of a US-Taliban agreement in Qatar. Gh

was elected to a second term with 50.64 percent of the 

final valid vote, a narrow margin over the constitutional 

requirement that the winner of the presidential race 

secure a majority in excess of 50 percent.27

Abdullah, who received 39.5 percent of the final vote, 

rejected the outcome, claiming to have secured the 

majority of “clean” votes; Ghani and Abdullah held parallel

competing inauguration ceremonies in early March 2020. 

The United States refrained from explicitly endorsi

the outcome of the election, and initially attempted to 

broker another compromise between the two sides. 

Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad ultimately attended Ghani’s

inauguration, and S officials warned against the creatio

of “parallel governments” or “any use of force to resolve 

political differences.” This signal appears to have deterred Abdullah from making further claims to the authority to appoint new governors in provinces where he had

mobilized the greatest base of support.28 In late March, 

with no resolution to the standoff and with progress 

toward the opening of intra-Afghan negotiations with 

the Taliban also stalled,US Secretary of State Mic

Pompeo announced a $1 billion cut to assistance to the 

Afghan government, saying that the United States wa

“disappointed in [Ghani and Abdullah] and what their conduct means for Afghanistan and our shared interests.”2

Further mediation efforts by other Afghan political leaders, including former president Karzai, ultimately led to 

an announcement in mid-May that Ghani would agree to

appoint Abdullah head of a new High Council for National 

Reconciliation, giving him a mandate to direct national 

strategy on future peace talks with the Taliban and ending

the deadlock over the outcome of the elections.30 This

agreement appears to repeat many of the commitments 

made under the previous National Unity Governmen

formulation, which included offering Abdullah a senior 

title and accompanying government budget and protocol, 

giving him some measure of influence or control over 

cabinet ministry and provincial appointments, and making 

commitments to a process of electoral reform and to 

holding provincial and district elections in the future. All of 

these commitments had proved to be points of contention during the previous five-year term of the National 

Unity Government, and as of this writing, the degree t

which the new role for Abdullah will prove to be a durable 

power-sharing settlement remains to be seen.31
USIP.ORG 9

Assessing Access to the Vote

Access to an assigned polling center, both during the 

initial voter registration phase and subsequently on 

election day, is critical in determining the makeup of 

the potential and actual electorate. Prospective Afghan 

voters must appear in person at a polling center, a 

site set by the IEC at which voting is held; each center 

contains a set number of polling stations, the booths 

in which voters cast their ballots.32 (As detailed further 

in this section, the specific physical locations of the 

centers, the number of stations assigned to them, and 

their identifying codes, have been significantly readjusted by the IEC between election periods.33) 

Beginning with the 2018 parliamentary elections, voters 

were assigned to registration rolls at specific polling 

centers or stations, a reform measure adopted in part 

to limit excess ballot distribution and address allegations made during previous election cycles that some 

voters had fraudulently used multiple registration cards 

to cast multiple votes.34 These new controls, aimed at

forestalling challenges to the integrity of the vote result, 

come at a cost to voting access, as any potential voters 

unable to access polling centers either to register or to 

cast a ballot will find themselves effectively disenfranchised from the formal political system. Administrative 

decisions by election and security officials on where to 

distribute and keep open new or existing centers and 

unplanned disruptions of center openings on election 

day because of security threats or logistical constraints 

all contributed to an uneven distribution of access and 

representation across the country.

VOTING IN A WAR ZONE

Threats by the Taliban have clearly had an impact on th

ability of Afghan election and security officials to administer elections over the past decade and a half of the 

insurgency, deterring potential voters from participating 

and constraining the boundaries of the electorate. As in 

past elections, the Taliban warned in public statements

prior to the 2019 election day of potential attacks against 

polling sites and called for a boycott of the polls.35 Even 

in the absence of direct violence, a study of the 2010 

Afghan parliamentary elections found evidence that 

increasing numbers of security personnel present at 

Afghan polling centers had a deterrent effect on voter 

participation, either because they signaled potential risks 

or because of voter antipathy toward police personnel.36

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan’s postelection report on violence during the 2019 campaig

period reported a decline in violence relative to that 

observed in 2018 but an increase in attacks when compared to the 2014 election; in total, at least 85 civilian 

deaths and 373 injuries were reported during the 2019 

campaign period, almost all of which were attributed 

to the Taliban.37 The UN does not release detailed disaggregated figures, however, and the lack of any oth

comprehensive, precise, and reliable data on violent 

incidents, both during and outside the electoral period, 

has forestalled detailed analysis of the direct relationships between the armed conflict in Afghanistan and 

the elections analyzed here.38

The lack of detailed figures creates a large, unobserved security variable in the current data set, which

should lead to caution in interpreting any of the 

accompanying analysis. Public release of the electoral 

data that inform and accompany this report should aid 

further research on the relationship between elections 

and conflict in the future and will hopefully encourage 

other entities and analysts to similarly make their data 

available for broader public learning.
10 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

In the absence of detailed security information against 

which to evaluate polling center closures, some analysts and political candidates have alleged that polling 

center access was deliberately expanded or restricted 

to produce electoral outcomes meant to benefit the 

incumbent. These concerns and the potential impact of

polling center closures on the makeup of the electorate are considered next.

DEFINING A COMMON SET OF 

POLLING CENTER LOCATIONS

A first challenge is to identify the polling centers. Several

changes were made to polling center siting plans between the last presidential election, held in 2014, and 

the 2018 parliamentary elections, whose initial polling 

center plan also served as the basis for preparations for 

the 2019 presidential election. Although the IEC identifies 

each polling center through a unique seven-digit code 

(the first four digits of which also identify the center’s 

parent province and district), almost all centers were 

renumbered between 2014 and 2018, confounding easy 

comparisons across time periods. Tracking the changes

made to specific sites is further complicated by the limited 

amount of other supporting location information released 

by the IEC, nonstandardized location naming conventions, and other discrepancies between data sources.

Using a combination of methods, including geocoordinate

matches, matches by center name and district, and matches by rough geocoordinate proximity, the author was able 

Maidan Wardak 

Paktika 

Zabul Paktia 

Herat

Farah

Nimroz 

Ghor

Daikundi

Sar-e-Pul 

Jawzjan

Faryab 

Badghis 

Helmand Kandahar 

Uruzgan Ghazni 

Khost 

Logar 

Parwan 

Nangarhar 

Kabul 

Kunar 

Laghman 

Kapisa 

Nuristan 

Panjshir 

Badakhshan Bamiyan

Balkh 

Samangan 

Kunduz 

Baghlan 

Takhar 

Map 1. Polling Center Change in Status, 2014–18

Note: Polling center coordinates may be approximate, and points are not to scale. Includes all centers for which coordinate data is available; not all 

sites were opened on election day in either period due to either planned or unplanned closures. District boundaries are based on a 399-district data 

set, and do not reflect subsequent administrative splits to those districts.
USIP.ORG 11

to link 5,330 of 6,792 polling centers available from 2014 

to corresponding sites planned in 2018; 1,462 locations 

from 2014 therefore appear to have been dropped.39 From 

the results of this matching effort and the universe of potential centers for the 2018–19 elections, it can be inferred 

that an additional 2,090 polling centers were established 

at new locations not previously used in the 2014 election.

In some cases, these new 2018 polling centers were 

established as a result of decisions by the IEC to 

relocate centers to a nearby location; an April 2017 IEC 

regulation prioritized the use of school buildings or 

other public facilities as the location for centers, leading to many shifts at centers previously located at town 

mosques to schools instead.40 In other cases the new 

2018 centers were established in entirely different areas of the district, likely reflecting the overall deterioration of security during this period and the retrenchment 

of government control to district centers. Other new 

polling centers may have been added to existing areas 

that saw high levels of engagement in past elections, 

to accommodate additional voters.41

The geocoordinate data sources available for this matching process—which were generated by separate sources

and could not be independently validated—in many cases 

did not align exactly between the two periods, even when 

they appeared to specify the location of the same named 

building. The process of manual matching almost certainly

introduced some further errors or omissions, meaning caution should be advised in drawing firm conclusions from 

this data set. That said, this is likely the most comprehensive public data set currently available that links the two

election periods’ physical polling locations (see map 1).42

IMPACT OF 2014 CENTER CLOSURES 

AND RELOCATIONS

With these caveats in mind, it is possible to conduct some 

analysis on the potential impact of the closures of the 

2014 centers and the distribution of the new 2018 centers. 

Overall, nationwide, the median straight-line distance (“as 

the crow flies,” hence not an accurate reflection of actual 

transit times for potential voters traveling to a new site) 

between a closed 2014 center and the nearest available substitute center in 2018 was only 408 meters, but 

the average varied substantially by region, and in some 

cases the nearest available replacement center was 

many kilometers away. The provinces of Farah, Logar, and

Kandahar saw some of the greatest distances between 

closed centers and their nearest available replacement.

While the full range of factors contributing to a decision 

by the IEC to drop a particular polling center remains 

unknown, hypotheses that new centers were deliberately 

concentrated in particular areas to benefit the ultimate 

winners of the most recent parliamentary or presidential 

elections appear to be unsupported based on the available results.43 Nationwide, the share of a center’s votes 

cast for Ashraf Ghani in the 2014 second-round runoff

election was positively correlated, to a statistically significant degree, with the subsequent closure of that center 

in 2018–19. (The converse applies to Abdullah Abdullah’s

vote share in the two-person 2014 runoff election, where 

a higher share of the vote for Abdullah was negatively 

correlated with a polling center’s closure prior to 2018–19.) 

Collectively, the centers that were dropped between 2014 

and 2018 provided approximately 23 percent of Ghani’s

final valid vote total in 2014 and 18 percent of Abdullah’s.44

When variations between provinces are also taken into 

account, however, no correlation between a center being 

dropped and past candidate vote share is found.45 The

geographic distribution of center closures between 2014 

and 2018 shows a concentration in southern and eastern 

provinces, such as Paktia, Paktika, and Nangarhar, where 

Ghani received a large share of his 2014 votes (and where

security and government control have long been tenuous). The polling center closure decisions made in the

intervening four years appear to have adversely affected 

Ghani’s potential vote pool by forcing past supporters to

go to new centers for voting. But conditions at the provincial or district level appear to be the primary factor driving 

these closures or relocations, not variations in a given 

center’s political history.
12 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

Newly created and relocated polling centers do not 

appear to show systematic differences in the levels of 

voters’ political engagement or candidate choices for 

the 2018–19 elections when compared to previously 

existing sites. Although new sites did report overall 

higher turnout rates in the 2019 election, this was not 

the case at those same sites earlier in the 2018 parliamentary elections. Variations in 2019 again appear 

to have been driven more by differing provincial or 

district turnout trends than by the site’s status as a new 

location: when these factors are controlled for, new 

sites if anything appear to show a weak tendency for 

lower 2019 turnout.46 When compared to results from 

sites that remained in existence from the 2014 election 

through the 2019 election, matching results data from 

2014 centers that closed to their nearest available 2019 

replacement center also did not produce evidence 

of statistically significant deviations in candidate vote 

share for either Ghani or Abdullah based on distance

to the newly relocated site.47 Nor do newly created or 

relocated centers appear to be significantly different 

from other existing centers in the share of votes cast 

for winning candidates in either the 2018 parliamentary 

elections or the 2019 presidential election.48

PLANNED CENTER OPENINGS

Another round of polling center closures took place 

as part of the IEC planning process in the immediate 

run-up to the latest elections, which further constrained 

voter access around the country in disproportionate 

ways. Following the closures of 2014 polling centers 

and the opening of new sites in 2018, the IEC established a universe of 7,420 polling center sites potentially available for use in the 2018–19 elections, of which 

2,090 (28.2 percent) were sites newly created since 

the 2014 election. Of the 5,330 previously existing 

centers on this list, 429 (8.1 percent) had reported 

no results in the 2014 elections owing to planned or 

unplanned closures at the time, suggesting at most 

around 7,000 centers that could plausibly be opened 

again. From this total universe of available sites, the IEC 

ultimately announced plans to open 5,106 centers for 

the 2018 parliamentary elections (completely omitting 

Ghazni province, where no parliamentary elections

were held) and 5,373 centers for the 2019 presidential election (which were held in Ghazni).49 With a few

exceptions, these planning choices were based on 

security reviews held in early 2018, followed by the 

IEC’s conduct of an initial round of voter registration at 

centers in the spring of 2018 and a subsequent “topup” voter registration exercise in the summer of 2019. 

These sites currently constitute the geographic limit of

the enfranchised Afghan electorate.

As with the previous closure of 2014 centers, there is 

variation within the data and limited information from 

the IEC about all the factors that went into its immediate pre-election planning decisions. However, an 

available center’s planned operating status in both the 

2018 and 2019 elections was also negatively correlated with that center’s vote share for Ashraf Ghani in

the 2014 elections (even controlling for the province 

in which a center was located), as many of the centers 

planned to be closed were again concentrated in the 

southern and eastern parts of the country, where Ghani

had previously run strongest but where security threats 

from the Taliban were also gauged to be the highest.

This finding also holds when candidate vote shares

from closed 2014 centers are assigned to their nearest 

available 2018–19 replacement.50 In other words, while 

high historical support for Ghani may not have been

the determining factor informing these pre-election 

closure decisions, the closures appear to have fallen 

hardest on areas where he had previously registered 

strong bases of support, even after previous closures 

and relocations had taken place.

The IEC’s dropping of 2014 sites from its 2018–19 universe of potential sites and the subsequent further 

closure of sites in the pre-election planning period removed polling locations where roughly a third of all 

valid votes had been recorded in the 2014 second-round runoff voting.
USIP.ORG 13

Cumulatively, the IEC’s dropping of 2014 sites from its 

2018–19 universe of potential sites and the subsequent 

further closure of sites in the pre-election planning period 

removed polling locations where roughly a third of all 

valid votes had been recorded in the 2014 second-round 

runoff voting, of which 62 percent had gone to Ghani

and 38 percent to Abdullah.51 Votes recorded at these 

locations represented 37.5 percent and 28.7 percent, 

respectively, of each candidate’s final valid vote totals in 

2014, again indicative of the disproportionate impact that 

the pre-election closure decisions had on any attempts 

by Ghani to repeat his past performance in these areas.5

With no voter registration activities carried out for these 

centers after they were dropped from IEC planning efforts 

in early 2018, any potential returning supporters would 

have had to travel to other open centers to register on 

the rolls, or otherwise forgo participation in the elections.

UNPLANNED ELECTION-DAY DISRUPTIONS

Election-day disruptions of these operating plans 

further constrained the participation and representation of the potential Afghan electorate. Of the 5,373 

centers that the IEC sought to open in 2019, only 4,647 

(86.5 percent of planned) were reported to have fully 

opened, and another thirty-two centers opened only 

a portion of their planned polling stations.53 These

closures were in part driven by a pre-election security 

review by the Afghan Ministry of Interior (MOI), which 

in late August 2019 announced closures of 431 of the 

5,373 polling centers previously announced by the IEC 

(8.02 percent of the total planned).54 The MOI and IEC

never released a detailed list of which specific centers 

were to be affected by these closures, so it is unclear 

which of the 726 full center closures reported on election day were deliberately undertaken in response to 

the MOI review and which were driven by administrative or security constraints on election day itself.55

In some cases the election-day closure rate appears 

to have been driven in part by overly optimistic IEC 

plans to open sites despite past problems at those 

locations. Although the IEC did not provide comparable 

detailed closure status reporting for the 2018 elections, 

291 of the 726 centers that were closed in 2019 (or 

approximately 40 percent of the day-of closures) had 

also previously reported no results in the parliamentary 

elections held the year prior.56

The net effect in either case was the disenfranchisement of any voters registered to those closed centers,

who, even had they been able to travel to a different 

nearby polling center, would not have been able to 

cast ballots, given the new station-based registration 

assignments.57 Nationwide, planned but closed centers 

collectively accounted for 9.3 percent of the registered 

electorate, or around 895,000 potential voters.

While most of the pre-election planned closures had 

been concentrated in Afghanistan’s south and east, many 

of the unplanned closures on election day took place in 

the north and east, including the closure of 126 centers 

in Balkh province, amounting to nearly 45 percent of the 

total centers initially planned to be open in that province.58 In at least eighteen districts, almost all of which 

were concentrated in the north or east in provinces such 

as Faryab or Badghis, none of the IEC’s polling centers 

opened as planned, which collectively totaled approximately 165,000 registered potential voters, or around 1.7 

percent of the national total electorate. In many cases 

this represented a substantial drop in polling center open 

rates when compared to the parliamentary elections the 

year prior, as can be observed in figure 1.

As noted previously, Ghani’s historical base of support

was more affected by the previously planned closures, 

but Abdullah appears to have suffered disproportionately from the impact of election-day disruptions. It 

is possible to derive a speculative estimate as to the 

potential impact of these election-day closures on the 

2019 election outcome by extrapolating turnout rates 

and candidate vote choices, by district where available, to those centers that did not open on election day. 

This counterfactual projection assumes uniform political

preferences and levels of engagement with the electoral 
14 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

process across an entire district area—neither of which 

holds true across all of Afghanistan’s districts—and does 

not produce estimates for districts where no voting took 

place at all.59 However, were these conditions to hold 

and had all centers opened as planned on election day, 

approximately 47,000 additional votes might potentially 

have been cast, including approximately 18,000 votes 

for Ashraf Ghani, approximately 24,000 for Abdullah

Abdullah, and approximately 4,500 votes for other candidates. These adjusted vote totals would not have altered

Ghani’s narrow margin over a 50 percent majority—were

this projection to hold, he would still receive 50.3 percent 

of the final adjusted total, all other things held equal—but 

they are suggestive of the differential impact of these 

particular disruptions, and again reinforce the importance 

of voter access in shaping election outcomes.

VOTER REGISTRATION PATTERNS

With the universe of polling centers where the IEC 

attempted to hold the election now defined, what 

variations in voter registration—the first step necessary for an individual to participate in the election 

process—can be observed at those centers? As 

mentioned earlier, the 2018 and 2019 elections were 

the first to assign voters to specific polling centers (in 

2018) or polling station booths within those centers 

(beginning in 2019).60 The registration requirements

imposed by the IEC are the strictest to be enacted in 

any Afghan election to date, a factor that has likely 

contributed to the apparent relative reduction in turnout at the polls when compared to turnout estimates 

during prior election cycles.

Note: Points are provinces; X- and Y-intercepts are national totals. Preliminary results reporting data used for 2018 parliamentary election results due to 

discrepancies in final results data for Kabul as published by the IEC; the IEC did not report an official closure status for 2018 centers as in 2019. Points 

below the diagonal line represent a decrease in open rate against planned compared to the 2018 elections, and points above the line an increase.

Figure 1. Election Day Closures, 2018 and 2019
USIP.ORG 15

Current IEC procedures indicate that after registering 

to vote, voters should receive a sticker to affix to their 

national ID card (the tazkera, distributed and overseen 

by the Afghanistan Central Civil Registration Authority, 

or ACCRA) to confirm their status; this sticker is then 

checked against the appropriate polling center or station 

list on election day prior to the provision of a ballot.61

In previous years, voters could use any of a number of 

voter cards issued each election cycle as proof of registration. The proliferation of such cards raised recurrent

concerns over potential fraud through the distribution 

of excess ballots (which could be seized and stuffed) or 

potential cases of repeat individual voting.62

While the introduction of the new voter list system 

marked a long-sought electoral reform milestone, the 

IEC’s public communications around its 2018–19 voter 

registration figures were incomplete or internally contradictory, raising questions as to the accuracy of the new 

numbers. After an initial registration drive was held in 

April 2018 at the polling centers planned to be open for 

the parliamentary elections, the IEC’s final 2018 registration list totaled approximately 8.843 million voters.63 Prior 

to the presidential elections, the IEC also conducted a 

monthlong “top-up” registration exercise in June 2019 

to register newly eligible voters or otherwise update its 

voter lists.64 The IEC announced a new preliminary set of

registration figures in July 2019 that it said amounted to 

a net increase of approximately 317,000 voters (omitting 

registrations in Ghazni, where the process continued

through the summer), although it emphasized that the 

data released at the time were not final.65 The actual

change in the detailed preliminary registration reports 

released alongside this statement was a net decline of 

8,443 registered voters from 2018, however.66

The publication in August 2019 of the IEC’s pre-presidential election polling center plan included final voter

registration data for all planned centers, superseding 

the earlier preliminary registration data. These new

final registration figures totaled approximately 9.665 

million voters. Excluding Ghazni, for which there were

no previous 2018 registration data, this represented 

a net increase of approximately 595,000 voters over 

the earlier preliminary 2019 figures and an increase of 

approximately 587,000 over 2018 data.67

Later press accounts indicated that the 2018 voter rolls 

were also updated in early 2019 to add “[voter registration] books that had not been scanned and some pages 

that had been missing,” prior to the removal of 428,901 

duplicate or “ghost” voter records, which reportedly produced a new total of 9.103 million voters.68 By inference, 

this would indicate approximately 689,000 registrations 

were added prior to the removal of duplicate records, 

for a net increase of approximately 260,000 total 

registered voters over 2018, prior to the beginning of 

the top-up registration conducted in June. IEC officials 

had previously confirmed the removal of the duplicate 

registrations but not the addition of previous missing 

registrations or other adjustments. This would suggest a

net increase of approximately 562,000 registered voters 

as a result of the top-up exercise, or around 327,000 

additional voters if the addition of Ghazni is discounted.

The IEC has not offered a public explanation for the discrepancy between these figures and earlier statements

Because of the previously looser voter requirements and 

the lack of detailed reporting on registration at the center 

or district level, there are no comparable figures for prior 

elections by which to directly benchmark and evaluate 

the registration figures reported for 2018–19. In cases 

where 2019 polling center locations can be matched to 

2014 voting records, higher levels of registration in 2019 

correlate with higher levels of valid final votes recorded 

in the 2014 second-round runoff election. This suggests

that 2019 registration levels at least roughly capture and 

correspond to the levels of observed voting intensity in 

2014—areas with large numbers of past votes also saw 

large numbers of registrants under the new system.69

However, the 8–9 million voters registered during the 

2018–19 period is only slightly larger than the maximum total number of votes reported in prior national 
16 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

elections. Were all votes cast in the 2014 runoff election upheld as valid votes under 2019 criteria, they 

would represent a turnout of nearly 75 percent against 

the 2019 registration numbers. In actual practice, the 

2019 turnout was less than 19 percent of those registered at the time, suggesting either a much reduced 

level of actual participation by registered voters or a 

much reduced pool of potential voters relative to years 

prior due to the new registration constraints.

Higher registration levels in 2018 and 2019 also positively 

correlate with a greater share of the vote previously cast 

at that polling center location for Ashraf Ghani in 2014,

even when the polling center’s province and total votes in 

2014 are controlled for, suggesting a registered potential 

electorate that could be generally more disposed toward 

Ghani. However, the total votes recorded at a polling

center in 2014 and in some cases the provincial location 

appear to be the most significant factors overall in predicting 2019 registration levels, and it is unclear how substantial this potential partisan slant in the registered voter 

pool might have been in terms of affecting 2019 outcomes, particularly given the aforementioned impacts of 

planned and unplanned center closures. The changes in

registration during the top-up period between 2018 and 

2019 do not clearly correspond to candidate preference 

at center locations in 2014, and instead appear to more 

closely track turnout levels in the 2018 parliamentary 

Map 2. Final Voter Registration as a Percentage of Voting Age Population

(CSO/ANSIA 2018–19 Population Estimate)

Note: District boundaries are based on a 399-district data set, and do not reflect subsequent administrative splits to those districts. 2019 population 

and voter registration data has been reaggregated to match district boundaries.
USIP.ORG 17

elections, which suggests that polling center locations 

where registered voters were generally more engaged 

in the 2018 contest were also more likely to participate in 

the top-up registration exercise that followed.70

The IEC assigns men and women voters to separate

polling booths within each center and breaks out registration statistics for male and female voters. Female 

voting trends are discussed in detail later in this report, 

but overall female registration was less than 35 percent of total registration nationwide. This is a decline

from previous years, in which women were estimated 

to account for around 40 percent of the registered 

potential electorate, although again, looser registration 

requirements in past years limit the comparability of 

those earlier estimates. The 2019 female registration

was equivalent to 45.2 percent of the total estimated 

voting-age female population. Almost all provinces 

(including Kabul) saw registration rates equivalent 

to less than a third of their estimated eligible female 

voting-age population, however, while Kandahar, Farah, 

Helmand, Zabul, and Uruzgan provinces all reported

female registration rates lower than 10 percent.

GAPS IN CENTER COVERAGE

The IEC has stated a commitment to provide “proper

and equitable access to polling centers for all eligible 

voters.” The IEC’s April 2017 polling center regulations set a minimum threshold of 200 eligible voters

to establish a polling center within a settlement, with 

a maximum five-kilometer distance between a prospective voter’s residence and that person’s assigned 

center.71 The IEC authorized further adjustments to

these guidelines based on local conditions, however, 

and in practice, security and administrative constraints 

appear to have left a significant portion of the country 

without access to the polls.

The IEC’s published plans offer some insights into

the known universe of potential and actual centers 

that were available, planned, and opened from 2014 

to 2019, but the absence of current and publicly 

accessible high-resolution data on settlements across 

the country or detailed Afghan census figures makes 

it difficult to fully assess further gaps in coverage 

that are not reflected in the existing polling center 

plans. The Afghan government has not held an official national census since 1979, and the population

estimates released annually by its Central Statistics

Organization (CSO, reorganized as the Afghanistan

National Statistics and Information Authority, or ANSIA

in 2018) are based on projections derived from a partial 

2003–05 household survey and the 1979 census, both 

of which omitted portions of the country where security 

threats limited survey access.72 High levels of population displacement, undercounting in rural areas, and 

accelerated urbanization in major cities all mean that 

these population figures are certainly not reflective of 

the actual population distribution on the ground, but 

they serve as the official basis for most government 

and donor planning.73

Some efforts have been undertaken by international donors to generate finer-grained estimates of the

Afghan population. While many of these efforts have 

been fragmented over time, proprietary, or classified, 

the World Population project, an international academic 

consortium led by the University of Southampton tha

makes use of satellite observation and statistical modeling techniques to provide global population estimates, 

offers one potential source of public data. A 2016–17 

WorldPop pilot study for the Afghan government that 

incorporated additional statistical sources and local 

survey data, as well as a private settlement database 

produced by the UK firm ALCIS, estimated a populatio

of as many as 34.5 million people, compared to the 

27.7 million estimated at the time by the CSO.7

These projections have not been incorporated into

the WorldPop project’s public data sets, however, 

which follow official government census estimates 

and attempt to estimate how those population figures 

are likely distributed across the country’s geography. 

WorldPop currently estimates slightly lower overall 
18 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

population totals than the official figures (approximately 

29.6 million people nationwide in 2019 according to 

WorldPop, as opposed to 30.08 million people according to the CSO/ANSIA).75 The project has generally estimated higher population levels in more outlying are

of the country than official figures indicate, although its 

projections also have higher levels of estimate uncertainty in these places.

With the aforementioned caveats about the reliability 

of underlying population figures in mind, total registration in 2019 amounted to around 64 percent of the 

total voting-age population of around 15 million people, 

based on a general census estimate that approximately 

50 percent of the nationwide population falls above the 

voting-age threshold of eighteen years. However, many 

provinces saw substantially lower rates of registration—

Farah, Uruzgan, Kunduz, Jawzjan, Ghazni, and Zabu

provinces all saw registration rates at around 35 percent 

or less of the estimated voting-age population—while 

registration in some provinces, including Paktia, Nuristan, 

Nangarhar, and Nimroz, exceeded 100 percent of the 

estimated voting-age population. District-level variation 

in registration rates is considerable (as can be seen in 

map 2), although the question as to the accuracy of the 

population denominator creates uncertainty as to whether underregistration or undercounting of the population 

is the larger determining factor.76

It is evident that the IEC’s coverage plans for polling 

centers and stations do not align with the official CSO

ANSIA estimates of population distribution. The media

province in the 2019 election planned for approximately one polling station (each of which was allocated a 

maximum of 400 registered voters) for every thousand 

estimated eligible voters. The actual number ranged

from 4.04 polling stations per thousand voting-age 

people in Paktia to 0.82 polling stations per thousand 

in Farah. Variation in the distribution of coverage is 

even more widespread at the district level. The bottom

quartile of Afghan districts report fewer than 1.28 polling stations planned per thousand voting-age people, 

while in the top quartile the IEC planned for more than 

3.06 stations per thousand.77

This basic measure of coverage assumes that stations are uniformly distributed across districts and

not concentrated in particular settlements or district 

centers, which understates the degree to which outlying communities in those districts may be deprived 

of access to any nearby voting sites, contributing to 

underregistration. Using the WorldPop project’s higher-resolution data—which makes population estimates

down to a grid of approximately 100-by-100 meter 

squares, as opposed to relying on aggregate figures 

for an entire district—it is possible to estimate the share 

of the Afghan population living within a set distance or 

catchment area surrounding each of the polling centers 

established by the IEC.

Based on these figures, approximately 7.9 million people, or around 26.7 percent of the total population, are 

estimated to be living within a one-kilometer radius of 

the 5,373 polling center locations that the IEC planned 

to open in 2019. Setting the distance threshold farther,

at ten kilometers—double the maximum range set 

under the IEC’s guidelines—yields around 2.58 million people (or around 1.29 million voting-age people, 

8.7 percent of the total population) still living outside 

the immediate area of these polling center sites. This

arbitrary distance threshold does not account for actual 

local travel conditions but points to the potentially still 

sizable portion of the population for whom visiting a 

polling place represents a significant investment of 

time and potential personal risk.

A further effort at calculating polling center catchment 

areas can be derived by generating polygons surrounding known polling center coordinates. These

polygons are idealized, mathematically generated 

boundaries known as Voronoi polygons or Voronoi 

diagrams, and again do not reflect actual physical travel conditions, which would inform what center might actually be closest or easiest to access based on a given 
USIP.ORG 19

potential registrant’s residence.78 (Voters are also not 

necessarily required to register at the center that might 

be nearest to them as the crow flies.) However, any 

point within a given polling center’s associated Voronoi 

catchment area is mathematically closer to that center 

than any other available center, which may offer a more 

refined estimate of likely catchment areas than simple radius distance thresholds. WorldPop population 

distribution estimates within each of these boundaries 

can therefore be used to calculate polling center–level 

estimates of registration rates against the estimated 

surrounding population, as shown in map 3.

These center registration rates vary widely against the

estimated eligible population in their catchment area, 

from a fraction of a hundredth of a percent in some 

cases to more than a thousand percent. Eliminating 

all outlier centers that are estimated to have registered above 100 percent of the eligible population in 

their surrounding catchment areas (producing a set of 

3,081 centers, or about 58 percent of those for which 

registration and location coordinates are available) 

produces a nationwide median registration rate of 50.9 

percent of the eligible population.

While voter registration numbers that significantly exceed estimated eligible population levels raise further 

questions as to the accuracy of the voter rolls, the 

appearance of overregistration within polling center 

catchment areas does not appear to be statistically 

200+%

Map 3. Afghanistan Polling Center Catchment Areas 

Note: Population based on WorldPop population estimates; catchment areas are Voronoi diagrams based on polling center coordinates. District boundaries 

are based on a 399-district data set, and do not reflect subsequent administrative splits to those districts. For visualization purposes, all centers estimated to 

have registered in excess of 200 percent of their surrounding catchment area eligible population are in red.
20 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

correlated with past Ghani vote share in those centers

in 2014.79 There are many potential explanations for the

appearance of overregistration at a given center: the 

surrounding population distribution estimate may be inaccurate and there are more people present in the area 

than expected; the calculated catchment area may not 

in fact accurately capture an area that the center could 

reasonably draw from because these polygon boundaries are not informed by actual geographic or transit 

features; and even if catchment areas are appropriate, 

the closure of other centers could reasonably push 

those outlying residents to the nearest open center, 

inflating its registration against its immediate population 

surroundings. But this registration metric is a potential 

means of identifying centers that could be subjected to 

further scrutiny, as well as centers that should be targets 

of future registration drives based on apparent underregistration of their available population.

Many areas of the country have no access to registration at all; at least twenty-three of Afghanistan’s 421 

districts had no planned polling centers in the 2019 

election and no associated voter registration data. 80

(This marked an improvement over the previous year,

when no parliamentary elections were held in Ghazni

province.) According to CSO/ANSIA estimates, thes

twenty-three districts comprise approximately 1.08 

million people, or approximately 3.5 percent of the 

total national population estimate. The 41 total districts where no polling centers were open on election

day 2019, including both those in which no centers 

had been planned and those that failed to open as 

planned, further amounted to an estimated 2.05 million 

people, or 6.8 percent of the national population. This

represents a substantial deterioration from the 2014 

elections, in which only seven districts, or 0.86 percent 

of the CSO/ANSIA-estimated national population a

the time, reported no results on either the first or the 

second round of the election. 

Even in cases that fell short of a total districtwide 

breakdown in polling access, the elimination or closure 

of polling centers affected many potential voters in the 

surrounding locale. Using catchment area calculations,

the areas around centers that were dropped between 

2014 and 2018–19 collectively comprise around 7.03 

million people, according to WorldPop estimates (23.7 

percent of total population), or around 3.51 million potentially eligible voters.81

While the reach of the Afghan state has historically been 

limited, these gaps in coverage have obvious implications for the representativeness of the formal political 

system. Although considerable uncertainty remains 

about the population estimates involved, which is beyond the scope of this report to resolve, it is clear that 

substantial portions of the Afghan public have no access 

to elections as a means of choosing their national leadership and must instead either find other mechanisms 

through which to advance their interests or seek to 

remain separate from the control of a state that cannot 

seek their formal political consent through the ballot.

It is clear that substantial portions of the Afghan public have no access to elections as a means of 

choosing their national leadership and must instead either find other mechanisms through which to 

advance their interests or seek to remain separate from the control of a state that cannot seek their 

formal political consent through the ballot.
USIP.ORG 21

Counting, Auditing, and 

Validating the Vote

Regardless of how many voters are able and willing to 

participate at polling locations on election day, the final 

result of any election is determined by the counting and 

validation (or not) of those votes. Under Afghan electoral

law, the IEC holds responsibility for the administration 

and vote-tallying process, and the ECC is tasked with 

resolving complaints filed on and after election day and 

after the publication of preliminary results. Two major

stages of auditing and recounting vote totals took place 

after the close of the polls in September 2019. The firs

was led primarily by the IEC in response to discrepancies between polling station tally sheets and biometric 

voter records, prior to publication of the preliminary 

results in December, and the second was undertaken in 

response to decisions by the ECC to address complaints 

filed after the publication of those results but prior to 

their finalization in February 2020.

Transparency on the part of both electoral bodies in

the 2018 parliamentary elections was minimal, even as 

the results aggregation phase stretched on for more 

than six months. Ultimately, the published results for

the Kabul parliamentary elections (the last province for 

which results were announced, and also the province 

electing the largest number of legislators and with the 

most candidates contesting) still showed substantial 

discrepancies between the provincial level aggregate 

vote totals used to determine winning candidates and 

the polling center–level results released by the IEC.82

In September 2019 the former commissioners of both

the IEC and ECC (who had been replaced by President 

Ghani midway through the parliamentary results count)

received prison sentences for allegedly altering the 

vote counts in several parliamentary races. While this 

action may have served as a warning signal to election 

administration officials in the 2019 race, the specifics of 

the cases were not disclosed, and no election results 

appear to have been overturned in response to the ruling.83 The new IEC leadership made modest transparency improvements in the 2019 presidential election,

providing more details on its process of counting and 

auditing results than it had previously done, but some 

significant gaps remain in its reporting.

The question of what happened during the audit and

recount process and why is central to understanding the 

outcome of the 2019 presidential election. The centralization of the result aggregation and validation process

in the offices and warehouses of the IEC and ECC in 

Kabul—a major feature during the 2014 presidential election, as well as during the extended 2018 parliamentary 

election process—offered a far more direct means of 

altering the results of an election than local-level mobilization by a national campaign.84 This centralized process offers opportunities for closer scrutiny (if the chain

of custody of materials from local centers is upheld), but 

also a more direct point for influence over the results, 

whether through the use of the formal complaints and 

appeals system or through illicit manipulation or fraud.

Reform steps taken for the 2018 and 2019 elections—

most prominently, the introduction of biometric voter verification—reduced options for individual-level voter fraud. 

These measures may also have provided controls against

the capture and mass manipulation of an entire polling 

center’s results by local power brokers by tightening 
22 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

the criteria for a valid vote. However, the stakes of the 

electoral competition, the history of past political standoffs over disputed vote counts being resolved through 

alternative power-sharing negotiations, and continued 

questions about discretionary adjudication decisions 

made by the election administration bodies under conditions of limited transparency meant that the new technical 

reforms did not produce acceptance of the integrity of the 

final vote count on the part of losing candidates.

DISPUTED VOTES AND CONFLICTING 

REPORTING STREAMS

New registration requirements link Afghan voters 

through their tazkera national ID card to a specific 

polling center and station. As a further control against 

potential repeat voting or other forms of fraud, such as 

ballot stuffing, the IEC implemented a system of biometric voter verification (BVV) at polling sites in the 2018 

parliamentary elections. The procurement process for

the BVV system was rushed, leading to limited time 

for advance preparations, testing, or staff training, and 

in the 2018 elections IEC officials ultimately broadly 

waived the requirement that ballots had to be biometrically verified to be accepted as valid.85

For the 2019 election, the IEC attempted to introduce 

clearer processes and criteria for vote verification and 

polling station validation, again making use of BVV 

technology. In part at the insistence of the Abdullah 

campaign and other opposition candidates, and with 

the backing of the international donor community, IEC 

officials upheld the requirement that only biometrically 

verified votes should be accepted as valid, prioritizing 

the integrity of the vote count over the risk that real 

voters could be disenfranchised from any breakdown 

in the BVV system at their assigned polling site.86

Election workers at the Independent Election Commission in Kabul, Afghanistan, on September 30, 2019. (Photo by Jim Huylebroek/New York Time
USIP.ORG 23

Voters checking in at the polls were fingerprinted and 

had their photos recorded on a handheld BVV device, 

which would generate a scannable QR code sticker to attach to a sealed ballot and an accompanying digital biometric data set or signature, stored in the device’s memory 

card.87 This should confirm any ballot’s relationship to a

real registered voter (limiting options for stuffing ballots, 

so long as access to BVV devices or QR sticker printers is 

also controlled), and allow the identification and removal 

of any duplicate biometric signatures (limiting the chance 

of repeat individual voting, so long as all such signatures 

can be centrally checked against one another and any 

duplicates then identified by their matching QR sticker).88

After the polls closed on election day, polling station 

officers were tasked with counting votes on a tally sheet, 

a physical copy of which was then sent to Kabul for centralized aggregation, verification, and tabulation; ballot 

boxes were resealed and shipped to provincial centers 

in case of further audit orders. Separate from the biometric data records for all verified voters, a digital photograph of the tally sheet and a manually keyed-in summary of results were also transmitted by polling station

officers to the National Tally Center in Kabul using the

BVV device (in cases where cellular connectivity could 

be established).89 The BVV device itself, containing the

records of the number of voters processed and their 

accompanying digital biometric signature information, 

was returned to Kabul. The polling station tally sheet,

digital verification of those results, and matching biometric voter records formed the basic criteria for the IEC’s 

validation of a polling station’s reported vote totals.

Although the majority of polling stations met the IEC’s 

validation criteria, discrepancies between these reporting streams quickly emerged. Because the biometric 

records data did not include candidate choice, any 

polling station where there was a discrepancy between 

the vote totals on the physical tally sheet (which reported votes for each individual candidate) and the biometrically verified voter records (which did not) would have 

to undergo a recount or audit of the original ballot box 

in order to identify those ballots with verified QR code 

stickers, identify the choice of candidate, and produce 

an updated and reconciled vote total.

In the week after election day the IEC initially reported 

a provisional figure of approximately 2.69 million total 

votes cast—the source of which appears to have been 

a combination of end-of-election day verbal reports by 

IEC provincial staff and physical tally sheet estimates—

but later revised this number to approximately 1.93 

million biometrically verified vote records.90 This figure

was further revised to 1.84 million biometric records 

after the technology provider Dermalog removed 

roughly 86,000 duplicate biometric vote signatures, 

leaving the IEC to sort out a difference of approximately 850,000 votes (31.6 percent of the first provisional 

totals) between provisional tallies and the vote counts 

backed up by unique biometric signatures.91

AUDITING THE PARTIAL 

ELECTION-DAY RESULTS

In early November, following provisional tallies but prior 

to the release of any detailed results, the IEC issued a 

series of decisions identifying polling stations that were 

to undergo an initial audit or recount. These steps were

aimed at resolving the discrepancies between the two 

conflicting reporting streams, and also at responding 

to a set of election-day complaints filed by candidates 

with the ECC.92 Across all criteria categories, the IEC 

stated that it conducted audits or recounts of 8,494 

polling stations out of the 26,580 stations it reported 

were open on election day, or roughly a third of the 

total stations open. However, the IEC did not publicly 

release information identifying all polling stations under 

all applicable audit criteria, and only 8,268 unique polling stations could be definitively identified on the basis 

of the information released to the public.

IEC Decision 104 (of November 4, 2019) set a five-vote 

discrepancy between biometric records and tally sheet 

counts as the threshold for a recount; in total, this and 

related criteria covered 5,439 polling stations.93 IEC 
24 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

Decision 105 (of November 4, 2019) ordered audits for 

1,287 polling stations that had sent physical tally sheet 

results data to the National Tally Center but no accompanying biometric data and for 1,136 stations that were

reported by IEC staff to have been open on election 

day but from which no results data had been received, 

for 2,423 stations in total.94

In IEC Decision 109 (of November 15, 2019) and IEC 

Decision 112 (of November 21, 2019), 284 polling stations were selected for audit based on voter processing outside regular polling hours as indicated by the 

biometric device timestamp data. In total, 7,354 polling 

stations had reported such problems, but based on its 

assessment of timestamp data the IEC concluded that 

user setup error was the likely cause of the error in the 

other 7,070 polling stations not ordered to undergo 

further audit. With the exception of the few stations 

identified under Decision 112, the IEC did not publish a 

list identifying either the audited or potentially affected 

stations in such outside-hours cases.95

The IEC did not issue a separate official decision on the

presence of duplicate votes at a station as a criterion for 

audit, which would have produced the same need for 

candidate vote reconciliation as other discrepancies between biometric and nonbiometric vote tallies. Observer 

reporting indicates that these stations in all cases 

overlapped with other already ordered audit cases. If 

accurate, the roughly 86,000 duplicate votes removed 

on the grounds of biometric duplication would be equivalent to 4.7 percent of the initial biometrically verified 

votes recorded. Beyond aggregate figures, however, 

the IEC has not released any further details on the vote 

de-duplication process or explained the threshold it set 

with Dermalog for establishing a duplicate match.96

In another decision (Decision 108 of November 14, 2019) 

the IEC opted to accept all cases in which discrepancies 

were reported between the number of voters processed 

by a BVV device (a number generated by the device) 

and individual biometric voter data records for those 

stations (linked to a specific polling station on a digital 

memory card).97 This discrepancy was initially reported

to have led to a “quarantining” of these records in the 

biometric data system by Dermalog. Although several 

factors were reported to have produced these problems, switching memory cards (recording multiple station 

results on a single device, or using multiple devices 

to submit records for a single station) appears to have 

been the primary cause of these discrepancies. In total, 

4,563 stations were reportedly affected (17 percent of 

those reportedly open); at 1,466 polling stations there 

were 30,608 more voters in the device count than the 

memory card voter count (so vote records appeared to 

be “missing”), and at 3,097 polling stations there were 

168,238 fewer voters in the device count than the memory card voter count (so there appeared to be “extra” 

votes). Following its assessments, the IEC concluded 

that most of the discrepancies were due to technical 

problems, including the use of computers at IEC headquarters to complete the transmission of biometric 

records that could not be completed in the field due to 

cell network connectivity problems, or to other malfunctions of the biometric devices, and were not evidence of 

wrongdoing. In this case as well, however, no detailed 

identification of the potentially affected polling stations 

has been released by the IEC.

The Abdullah campaign and several other candidates

objected to the IEC’s decisions and opposed the audit 

and recount process, seeking the invalidation of all 

polling stations with out-of-hours votes, all votes initially 

quarantined because of discrepancies between device 

and memory card biometric records, and all stations 

initially missing biometric records, which the campaign 

estimated to collectively total approximately 300,000 

additional votes.98 The stakes for vote validation and

invalidation were high. Because the pool of votes after 

the implementation of biometric verification requirements was comparatively small, a change of approximately 20,000 votes would have been sufficient to shift 

margins by around 1 percent, which proved to be within 

Ghani’s margin of majority.9
USIP.ORG 25

Abdullah’s strategy during this period was most likely 

informed by his previously successful efforts to force 

an audit and eventual power-sharing compromise with 

Ghani after the 2014 presidential runoff election, as well

as by past disputes over the validity of the 2009 presidential election in which Abdullah came in second to 

Hamid Karzai. However, the lack of clarity about biometric vote records and the potential outcome of the audit 

may have also contributed to an internal assessment by 

the Abdullah team that it could plausibly achieve a win 

based on the information available to them at the time. 

In parallel with the IEC’s tabulation of results, the digital 

photographs of raw tally sheets transmitted through 

the BVV system were also made directly available by 

Dermalog and the IEC to all candidates’ campaign teams. 

Until the ambiguity was gradually removed through the

completion of the audit process, the margin between 

the two candidates at polling stations not subject to 

audit—which both sides had visibility over, although not 

all polling station photographs appear to have been successfully uploaded and some were illegible—was much 

narrower than in the post-audit results, with Ghani receiving 45.4 percent of the vote at stations not under any

scrutiny and Abdullah receiving 44.1 percent. Given the

past history of disputes, this margin may have seemed 

surmountable for the Abdullah campaign, but doing so 

would have required mass invalidation of the remaining 

disputed votes, over which visibility was much less clear.

In an effort to press their complaints against the IEC’s audit 

criteria, Abdullah’s supporters boycotted observation of 

the audits and blocked recounts from being completed in 

seven provinces where his support had been strongest, 

and he was able to quickly mobilize protests at IEC provincial offices.100 Attempts by the IEC to secure acceptance of 

its decision during this period and proceed with the audit 

in these areas were unsuccessful for several weeks, pushing back timelines for the completion of the process.101

However, after more than a month of delay, Abdullah 

ultimately relented and allowed the process to be completed—though without rescinding his objections to the 

IEC decisions to date—which led to the completion of the 

audit in the remaining seven provinces and the publication 

of preliminary results on December 22, 2019.102

AUDIT INVALIDATIONS AND CHANGES

Without the full release of detailed pre-audit provisional 

vote tallies, a picture of how the voting results changed 

following this process is still incomplete. However, 

after the audit was completed and the results were 

announced, the IEC released reports confirming the full 

invalidation of all votes at 2,299 polling stations, or 27.4 

percent of all stations audited (and 8.65 percent of all 

stations opened).103 Almost all these stations (2,124, or 

92.3 percent of stations invalidated) fell under the IEC 

audit criteria for stations that were initially missing accompanying biometric records; their invalidation upheld the 

requirement for biometric verification in order for a vote 

to be counted. The IEC reported the pre-invalidation,

non-biometrically verified vote totals for all invalidated 

stations, totaling 102,021 votes, or the equivalent of 

around 3.8 percent of the initial non-biometrically verified 

vote estimates.104 The remaining 6,000-some stations

that were audited saw adjustments to their individual 

vote totals, but the results were not fully invalidated as a 

consequence of the audit and recounting process.

Were the centers and stations whose votes were invalidated in 2019 the sites of large-scale fraud findings 

in past elections as well? The IEC and ECC provided

minimal information on the invalidation decisions made in 

the 2018 parliamentary elections. The large discrepancies

in the final results data for Kabul raise questions about the 

completeness of those results and prevent direct comparisons between the 2018 and 2019 election periods, which 

might otherwise aid in identifying problem polling centers 

Abdullah’s strategy . . . was most likely informed by his previously successful efforts to force an audit and 

eventual power-sharing compromise with Ghani after the 2014 presidential runoff election, as well as by 

past disputes over the validity of the 2009 presidential elections.
26 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

where results are consistently overturned or invalidated. 

Current polling stations (the level at which audits are 

ordered by the IEC and ECC) do not directly correspond 

to those active during the 2014 period because the IEC 

apportioned different numbers of stations per center 

and different numbers of voters per station. However, 

it is possible to evaluate vote changes and invalidation 

decisions made at the polling center level during the 

2014 presidential runoff audit—the only occasion when an 

entire set of preliminary results was fully recounted, under 

close international and candidate observer scrutiny—and 

compare those polling centers that can be matched to 

their 2018–19 counterparts. Based on this, we can confirm 

that “problem centers” in 2019, where all open polling 

stations were invalidated, do correlate significantly with 

the vote-level invalidation changes previously made at 

those same centers in 2014.105 During the audit in 2014, 

158 polling centers (out of 6,172) saw more than 50 percent of their final vote invalidated, and 87 of these centers 

(55.1 percent of the “problem centers”) saw all their votes 

invalidated again during the audit in 2019.

Polling centers that favored Ashraf Ghani in 2014 were the

subject of disproportionate scrutiny under the IEC’s audit 

decisions in 2019, even controlling for the concentration 

of audits in provinces such as Nangarhar, Paktia, and 

Kandahar that had broadly favored Ghani during the last

elections. In cases where polling centers can be matched 

between election periods, Ghani’s final valid vote share in

2014 was positively correlated with an initial audit decision 

by the IEC of all stations at that center in 2019, and the 

subsequent invalidation of all open stations at the center.

Ghani also appears to have suffered the brunt of invalidation decisions in 2019. Of the scanned results forms

released by the IEC for stations whose results were 

invalidated during the audit—the only source of unadjusted, pre-audit candidate-level vote totals released by 

the IEC—approximately 85,000 out of the approximately 

102,000 votes tallied had been initially recorded for 

Ghani, or around 83 percent of the total at these stations;

Abdullah had reportedly received approximately 11,000 

votes, or around 11 percent. Had these stations cleared 

the audit or had the biometric verification requirements 

otherwise been relaxed, Ghani would have received

52.4 percent of the new national total of approximately 

1.9 million votes, against only 38 percent for Abdullah. 

While Abdullah’s protests were unable to ensure the 

up-front invalidation of all polling stations initially found to 

be missing supporting biometric records, the fact that the 

results at almost all of the stations in this category were 

ultimately invalidated after the IEC’s first audit produced 

a much narrower margin over majority for Ghani than if

these controls had been relaxed, as had previously happened in the 2018 parliamentary elections.

The IEC’s decision to allow the investigation (rather

than outright invalidation, as sought by the Abdullah 

campaign) of stations that were initially missing biometric records data did lead to the inclusion of 27,641 

votes following the audit process.106 Because of the 

prior absence of available biometric records for these 

stations, these votes are assumed not to be reflected 

in the pre-audit national-level totals. Ashraf Ghani received approximately 24,000 votes from these stations

(2.64 percent of his national total), compared to around 

2,100 votes received by Abdullah. All else held equal, 

the invalidation of these stations as sought by Abdullah 

would not in and of itself have been sufficient to deny 

Ghani a margin over the 50 percent threshold required

to avoid a second-round runoff, given the accompanying change to the total valid vote denominator.

In cases where the IEC did not outright invalidate an 

entire polling station’s votes after its 2019 audit, the IEC 

did not publish pre-audit tallies for individual candidates 

that would allow an assessment of how vote totals were 

adjusted during the recount, prior to the publication of 

preliminary results. It did, however, provide an aggregate 

pre-audit biometric vote total for each audited station. 

The IEC did not clarify whether this figure represented a

pre- or post-vote de-duplication figure. However, for the 

stations for which these details were reported, it is possible to calculate the overall net change in biometrically 
USIP.ORG 27

Table 1. Polling Stations Audited and Results Invalidated by Province IEC Province Code 

Province Name 

Total PlannedPolling Stations, No. Total ClosedPolling Stations, No.Total ClosedPolling Stations, %Total KnownAudited Polling Stations, No. Total OpenPolling Stations Audited, % Total Invalidated Polling Stations, No. Polling StationsAudited with Results Invalidated, % Total Open Polling Stations with Results Invalidated, % 

01 Kabul 4,777 15 0.314 1,133 23.8 181 16.0 3.80 

02 Kapisa 481 19 3.95 189 40.9 49 25.9 10.6 

03 Parwan 704 1 0.142 106 15.1 24 22.6 3.41 

04 Maidan Wardak 516 124 24.0 193 49.2 165 85.5 42.1 

05 Logar 310 31 10.0 152 54.5 28 18.4 10.0 

06 Nangarhar 2,534 18 0.710 776 30.8 77 9.92 3.06 

07 Laghman 513 54 10.5 60 13.1 22 36.7 4.79 

08 Panjshir 295 0 0 9 3.05 6 66.7 2.03 

09 Baghlan 1,295 263 20.3 712 69.0 320 44.9 31.0 

10 Bamiyan 649 2 0.308 17 2.63 6 35.3 0.927 

11 Ghazni 828 3 0.362 346 41.9 172 49.7 20.8 

12 Paktika 773 0 0 388 50.2 174 44.8 22.5 

13 Paktia 1,194 208 17.4 715 72.5 299 41.8 30.3 

14 Khost 835 1 0.120 328 39.3 74 22.6 8.87 

15 Kunar 586 0 0 125 21.3 5 4.00 0.853 

16 Nuristan 286 117 40.9 106 62.7 8 7.55 4.73 

17 Badakhshan 1,093 109 9.97 286 29.1 29 10.1 2.95 

18 Takhar 1,026 235 22.9 77 9.73 11 14.3 1.39 

19 Kunduz 581 184 31.7 51 12.8 29 56.9 7.30 

20 Samangan 457 93 20.4 28 7.69 4 14.3 1.10 

21 Balkh 1,467 487 33.2 35 3.57 17 48.6 1.73 

22 Sar-e-Pul 436 61 14.0 43 11.5 2 4.65 0.533 

23 Ghor 798 318 39.8 246 51.2 26 10.6 5.42 

24 Daikundi 658 0 0 58 8.81 8 13.8 1.22 

25 Uruzgan 200 2 1.00 24 12.1 18 75.0 9.09 

26 Zabul 213 22 10.3 154 80.6 26 16.9 13.6 

27 Kandahar 1584 17 1.07 750 47.9 233 31.1 14.9 

28 Jawzjan 322 23 7.14 13 4.35 3 23.1 1.00 

29 Faryab 655 272 41.5 123 32.1 33 26.8 8.62 

30 Helmand 937 1 0.107 590 63.0 84 14.2 8.97 

31 Badghis 335 170 50.7 5 3.03 2 40.0 1.21 

32 Herat 1738 156 8.98 177 11.2 71 40.1 4.49 

33 Farah 226 0 0 89 39.4 67 75.3 29.6 

34 Nimroz 284 0 0 53 18.7 26 49.1 9.15 

National total 29,586 3,006 10.2 8,157 30.7 2,299 28.2 8.65 

Notes: Total known audited polling stations are based on available detailed reports released by the IEC, which is not reflective of the IEC’

self-reported aggregate total of stations audited (8,494 stations). Ashraf Ghani was the provincial vote leader in rows highlighted in teal

Abdullah Abdullah was the provincial leader in rows highlighted in purple.
28 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

Table 2. Net Changes after Audit Province Code 

Province Name

Provisional (NonBiometricallyConfirmed) Votesas of 10-03-19 Pre-AuditBiometricallyConfirmed Votes Net Change after De-duplicationVotes Added from Stations Missing Biometric Data Known Net Change after Audit Other Unaccountedfor Net Change Total ValidPreliminary Votes Net Change, PreAudit Biometrically Confirmed Votes to Preliminary Results % Change, PreAudit, Biometrically Confirmed Votes to Preliminary Results 

01 Kabul 49,473 372,343 −17,419 448 −3,326 −2,964 349,082 −2.3261 −6.2 

02 Kapisa 34,435 14,998 −426 0 −347 −111 14,114 −884 −5.9 

03 Parwan 42,257 34,778 −399 0 −275 −893 33,211 −1.567 −4.5 

04 Maidan Wardak 20,560 20,754 −597 0 −269 13 19,901 −853 −4.1 

05 Logar 22,939 15,700 −1,650 0 141 5 14,196 −1,504 −9.6 

06 Nangarhar 255,052 205,819 −4,118 5,069 −1,141 −1,273 204,356 −1,463 −0.7 

07 Laghman 27,537 26,469 −391 0 −49 −99 25,930 −539 −2.0 

08 Panjshir 19,205 19,035 −123 0 −3 −516 18,393 −642 −3.4 

09 Baghlan 187,340 34,326 −1,721 0 −1,949 −388 30,268 −4,058 −11.8 

10 Bamiyan 84,124 84,773 −399 0 129 −2,051 82,452 −2,321 −2.7 

11 Ghazni 72,705 57,532 −2,141 27 −1,991 −1,504 51,923 −5,609 −9.7 

12 Paktika 48,852 46,098 −7,058 0 −1,414 −6,114 31,512 −14,586 −31.6 

13 Paktia 161,655 36,399 −2,999 0 −588 5,574 38,386 1,987 5.5 

14 Khost 94,485 82,573 −6,225 0 1,302 216 77,866 −4,707 −5.7 

15 Kunar 67,383 67,143 −2,829 0 −185 76 64,205 −2,938 −4.4 

16 Noorestan 23,742 13,961 −2,274 0 −810 −8 10,869 −3,092 −22.1 

17 Badakhshan 68,038 74,483 −2,927 174 −567 −1,036 70,127 −4,356 −5.8 

18 Takhar 64,055 63,577 −296 430 −281 −1,595 61,835 −1,742 −2.7 

19 Kunduz 12,881 13,012 −36 0 −54 −246 12,676 −336 −2.6 

20 Samangan 39,255 39,044 −574 0 −89 −988 37,393 −1,651 −4.2 

21 Balkh 74,701 75,751 −1,406 0 −53 −1,947 72,345 −3,406 −4.5 

22 Sar-e-Pul 35,509 35,015 −602 503 −64 −650 34,202 −813 −2.3 

23 Ghor 71,603 56,431 −3,255 0 −4,289 −347 48,540 −7,891 −14.0 

24 Daikundi 117,506 102,053 −1,315 0 −133 −2.435 98,170 −3,883 −3.8 

25 Uruzgan 6,005 6,301 −24 0 −27 −816 5,434 −867 −13.8 

26 Zabul 18,378 11,031 −4,003 0 −1,013 −32 5,983 −5,048 −45.8 

27 Kandahar 193,741 64,494 −9,115 17,130 −925 −3,211 68,373 3,879 6.0 

28 Jawzjan 38,009 38,708 −134 0 −32 −832 37,710 −998 −2.6 

29 Faryab 43,464 26,833 −1,046 1,034 22 −247 26,596 −237 −0.9 

30 Helmand 115,333 38,233 −3,706 2,826 1,129 −345 38,137 −96 −0.3 

31 Badghis 9,961 10,027 −81 0 −1 −281 9,664 −363 −3.6 

32 Herat 129,993 119,270 −1,063 0 447 −2,444 116,210 −3,060 −2.6 

33 Farah 22,975 12,055 −5,825 0 −80 −1,609 4,541 −7,514 −62.3 

34 Nimroz 12,739 10,314 −49 0 −25 −439 9,801 −513 −5.0 

National total 269,5890 1,929,333 −86,226 27,641 −16,810 −29,537 1,824,401 −104,932 −5.4 

Notes: Ashraf Ghani was the provincial vote leader in rows highlighted in teal. Abdullah Abdullah was the leader in in rows highlighted in purple
USIP.ORG 29

confirmed vote records resulting from the audit, prior to 

the completion of preliminary results. A net 16,810 votes 

were removed when compared to the known pre-audit 

figures at these stations, or slightly less than 1 percent of 

the pre-audit total count of de-duplicated biometrically 

confirmed votes.

Table 1 summarizes the first phase of audits and invalidations in 2019 by polling station, at the provincial level. In

thirty-eight districts, half or more of all open polling stations were invalidated, and in eight districts (all in Farah 

province, with the exception of one district in Kandahar), 

all open stations were invalidated as a result of the 

audit. When coupled with the planned and unplanned 

closures discussed in the previous section, forty-nine 

of Afghanistan’s 421 districts—comprising an estimated 

1.28 million people, or around 4.4 percent of the national 

population, and approximately 173,000 registered voters, or 1.8 percent of the registered electorate—contributed no valid votes to the IEC’s preliminary results total.

UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS AND 

APPARENT DISCREPANCIES

While the overall result of this first audit was a decrease 

in the number of valid votes, 611 polling stations (11.2 

percent of all stations for which pre-audit biometric vote 

totals were available) appear to have increases in their 

votes in the published preliminary results when compared to the pre-audit biometric vote total previously reported by the IEC prior to the audit. In total, 14,865 votes 

(0.81 percent of the published preliminary total) appear 

to have been added at these stations as a result of the 

audit process—a surprising development, insofar as the 

previously reported biometric records are assumed to 

represent a maximum potential vote count per station.

Although it cannot be determined which candidates 

benefited from these added votes, the stations where 

this increase was reported collectively reported 63,111 

votes in the preliminary results, or around 3.5 percent of 

the preliminary vote total, and the overwhelming majority 

of votes at these stations (50,866, or 80.6 percent) went 

to Ashraf Ghani. While the votes added during the audit

would not necessarily have been decisive in denying or 

guaranteeing a runoff election, a decision by the IEC or 

ECC to invalidate the entirety of these polling stations 

would have done so, were all else held equal. Neither 

body opted to do so, and scrutiny of these changes on 

the part of other observers or candidates appears to 

have been minimal. It is also possible that the IEC’s published pre-audit biometric totals were inaccurate in some 

way, but the IEC has not clarified the discrepancy.

In sum, taking the reported national-level total of biometric 

votes prior to any other changes in the audit, removing the 

votes from duplicate biometric signatures, adding votes 

from stations previously flagged for missing biometric 

data, and adding the net change in known votes from the 

audit and recount, produces a remaining unaccounted-for 

net change when compared to the preliminary vote totals 

ultimately reported by the IEC in December 2019.107 The

five-vote biometric difference threshold set by the IEC, unobserved changes at the stations for which the IEC did not 

specify pre-audit biometric totals, or the removal of some 

biometric vote records at stations that were entirely invalidated, may be the source of some of these unaccounted-for changes. In total, this appears to show another 

29,537 additional votes removed on net, although again 

some cases of added votes appear, notably in Paktia and 

Kandahar provinces (see table 2). Without more information on pre-audit figures and the de-duplication process, it 

is unclear whether these are the result of inaccurate tallies 

or some other adjustment of pre-audit results not reflected 

in the more detailed polling station–level reporting.

FINAL RESULTS AUDIT

ECC decision making was, as in past elections, largely 

opaque, and few details were released by either the IEC 

or ECC as to the changes made as a result of the second 

audit and recount process that followed the announcement of preliminary results in late December 2019. 

Provincial-level ECC offices began a process of accepting complaints from candidates at that time, ultimately 

taking in approximately 16,500 such challenges by the 
30 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

close of filings. In mid-January 2020, the ECC announced 

that 9,866 of these complaints had been rejected, most 

for lack of supporting documentation, and that a recount 

had been ordered for 5,378 polling stations.108 No detailed list of the polling stations that fell under this order 

was released, but candidates reportedly complained of 

nonstandardized decisions across provinces in response 

to identical complaints. Observers also reported considerable overlap among the audit criteria (meaning some 

stations had potentially been ordered for audit by the 

ECC multiple times under different criteria) and that some 

stations were being ordered to undergo a second audit 

after having already undergone scrutiny during the first 

round of IEC-ordered audits earlier in the fall.

The provincial orders were not implemented, as a further

process of appeals against the provincial-level ECC decisions was undertaken by the national ECC offices; candidates filed nearly 6,400 such appeals.109 On February 

5, 2020, the national ECC issued a new set of orders 

superseding the lower provincial decisions and calling for 

a process to sample select polling stations and conduct 

a partial audit and recount under the three main categories of disputed votes that had previously been raised 

by Abdullah Abdullah’s campaign.110 After a delay of a 

week and a half, during which the two electoral administration bodies clarified the terms of the ECC orders and 

a process for implementation, the IEC began the second 

audit process. The audit moved forward swiftly this time

without the participation of candidate observation from 

Abdullah’s team—and the IEC announced its completion 

and the release of final results on February 18, 2020.111

The ECC’s orders included a 15 percent sample audit of

1,103 polling stations out of the 7,354 polling stations that 

had reported voting outside regular polling hours. The

actual list published by the IEC of its sample targets included only 1,085 polling stations, as the IEC’s efforts to 

ensure representation of all provinces in the sample produced fractions that were dropped. Based on the ECC 

order, if at least 35 percent of the sample (either 386 

stations, following the order, or 361 stations, following the 

number published) were found to not have “biometric 

information, a polling station journal, and a valid election 

day results sheet,” all 102,012 out-of-hours votes at all 

7,354 polling stations would be invalidated.

At least twenty-two stations in this sample list had already 

previously been audited and validated during the first 

audit and recount process on the basis of IEC Decision 

112. The IEC had also previously identified 262 polling stations for audit under its Decision 109, and some votes (but

not entire stations) were invalidated as a result. However, 

the IEC did not make public a list of which stations were 

covered under Decision 109 and did not publish pre-audit vote totals at those stations. Thus some additional

stations in the sample, beyond the twenty-two identified 

under Decision 112, may have also undergone a second 

audit, but it is not currently possible to identify which.

The ECC also ordered a sample audit of 309 polling stations out of 3,097 stations (a 10 percent station sample)

that were initially flagged for quarantine by Dermalog 

due to reports of 168,238 fewer voters recorded in the 

BVV device count than in the memory card’s transmitted 

biometric data set for the polling station (so there appeared to be “extra” votes added).112 Twenty-two of the

stations sampled under this criterion were also sampled 

under the out-of-time votes criterion. The 1,466 polling

stations that had been quarantined with more votes in 

the device count than the memory card voter count (so 

votes appeared to be “missing”) were not subject to an 

audit based on the ECC’s orders.

All votes at the stations under this category had been 

included by the IEC in the preliminary results. Per the 

ECC order, if at least 35 percent of the sample (either 

108 stations, following the order, or 109, following the 

number published) were again found to be missing 

biometric information, a polling station journal, and a 

valid election-day results sheet, all 3,097 polling stations 

in this category would then be audited to check for the 

same criteria. Any polling stations that met the criteria 

would be validated and any polling stations that failed to 
USIP.ORG 31

meet the criteria would be fully invalidated. Thirty-seven

polling stations on the sample list had already been previously audited and validated prior to the announcement 

of preliminary results during the first audit and recount 

process, so, assuming this was upheld in the second 

audit, at least 40 percent of the remaining stations would 

have had to fail to meet the special audit criteria to trigger a broader audit of all affected stations.

Finally, the ECC ordered a full recount for 298 polling 

stations out of 2,423 previously flagged during the 

first IEC audit as having initially been missing biometric voter data. These 298 stations had been validated

during the first audit process, reporting a total of 27,641 

votes, of which 24,433 were for Ghani (88.4 percent)

and 2,140 for Abdullah (7.7 percent).113 Following the 

ECC-ordered recount, votes would be invalidated on 

an individual basis if they were found to be lacking a 

certified biometric QR code sticker.

WHAT CHANGED, OR DIDN’T, 

ON THE FINAL AUDIT

After completion of the second audit and recount process and the announcement of final results in mid-February, the IEC reported an overall net change of −453 votes 

(−276 for Ghani, −149 for Abdullah, and a few other small

changes for other candidates) between preliminary and 

final results. This left Ghani’s margin over a 50 percen

majority effectively unchanged from the preliminary 

results and dashed Abdullah’s efforts to force a second-round runoff. However, even this small change was 

not reflected in the more detailed polling station–level 

results published on the IEC’s website. The latter omits

eight polling stations that had appeared in the preliminary results, none of which were included in the list of 

stations to be sampled in the second audit. Only one station had previously reported any votes, and its omission 

appears to have accounted for the only change to vote 

totals in the polling station–level results.114 An election observer source provided an internal IEC report to election 

stakeholders that indicated that twenty-three polling stations had been removed as a result of the audit, but that 

report did not specify the criteria for removing stations 

from the list; of these stations, fourteen still appear in the 

published results.115 Had all twenty-three been removed, 

this still would not have produced the net changes in the 

published IEC national-level results.

Although these discrepancies and other gaps in the 

available data leave significant unresolved questions 

about what changes were actually made in the second 

audit and finalization of results, it is possible to assess 

some of the possible impacts. The IEC has not explicitly

confirmed as such, but none of the ECC’s broader invalidation criteria appear to have been triggered based 

on the stations sampled for scrutiny and the thresholds 

for action established in the ECC’s orders.

Because it had the potential to mass invalidate a large 

number of votes, the outside-normal-hours vote criterion 

was the most plausible means by which a runoff could 

have been triggered based on the ECC orders. The IEC

has not published a list of all stations where these outside-normal-hours votes were reported, but an observer 

source did provide a detailed list. If this source’s identifications are accurate, these 7,354 polling stations reported a total of 676,271 votes in the preliminary results, of 

which 349,918 (51.7 percent) were recorded for Ghani and

258,155 (38.2 percent) for Abdullah. A complete invalidation of all votes at these stations—and no other changes 

to the results—would have produced a new grand total 

of 1.148 million votes, 573,950 (49.989 percent) of them 

for Ghani and 462,835 (40.3 percent) for Abdullah, which

would have narrowly triggered a second-round runoff. 

However, the ECC decision appears to have called at 

most for the invalidation of the out-of-hours votes themselves and not the full station’s results.116

Because the candidate choice of any individual out-ofhours vote that could have been removed is unknown, 

and because the number of those votes that may have 

already been removed from the preliminary results 

under the unpublished Decision 109 audit is also 

unknown, the exact potential distribution and impact 
32 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

on the outcome had the ECC’s invalidation order been 

triggered in a counterfactual scenario are currently 

unknowable. If all out-of-hours votes had been individually invalidated but the remainder of votes at those 

stations left unchanged, the invalidated votes would 

have to have broken at least 78 percent for Ghani in

order for his resulting vote total to be reduced below a 

50 percent majority, all other things held equal. At the 

stations sampled by the IEC, however, Ghani received

only 49.8 percent of the preliminary vote share. While 

it is possible that the out-of-hours votes disproportionately benefited one candidate or the other, if they were 

more proportionately distributed, this most likely would 

not have resulted in a runoff even if the full vote invalidation criterion was triggered.

No complete list of all polling stations that were flagged 

under initial quarantine is currently available to the author, 

so it is not possible to estimate the potential impact of a 

full invalidation for this category of disputed votes. Of the 

stations identified for sampling, there were 21,195 total 

votes in the preliminary results, of which 10,340 (48.8 percent) were recorded for Ghani and 8,804 (41.5 percent)

for Abdullah. The full invalidation of these sampled stations alone would not have been sufficient to produce a

second round, and this criterion faced the highest threshold for triggering any changes to the final vote totals.

Barring evidence of systematic fraud on the part of IEC 

election workers during the first audit and recount, results 

at polling stations that were initially missing biometric voter data, which had already been recounted, audited, and 

validated, were unlikely to be changed by the IEC as a 

result of the second ECC-ordered audit. Even a complete 

invalidation of these stations—which was unlikely, following the ECC order that votes be evaluated individually—

would not, in and of itself, be sufficient to force a second 

round, although it would leave a razor-thin margin over 

the 50 percent majority for Ghani

Beyond these criteria set out by the ECC and implemented by the IEC in the second audit, the IEC’s first 

audit of results also produced apparent discrepancies 

and cases where votes appear to have been added 

during the recount and audit process. These were not

identified as meeting criteria for audit or invalidation 

by the ECC; had they been fully invalidated, they could 

have potentially triggered a second-round runoff.117

Additionally, forty polling stations reported greater 

than 100 percent turnout (preliminary votes as a share 

of total voter registration), accounting for 4,080 votes 

in total. The removal of these stations, barring other

changes, would not have triggered a runoff, but the 

results from these stations were not invalidated based 

on the February 5 ECC order or in the publication of 

final results, raising questions as to the enforcement of 

voter registration rolls requirements in these cases.

Ultimately, then, the second ECC-ordered audit concluded in rapid fashion, with little clarity on the details of

some of its outcomes and with some apparent discrepancies evident in the final results published by the 

IEC. These and other administrative decisions set the

parameters for public participation in the elections and 

determine which votes are counted and which are not. 

The biometric vote system on the whole appears to have

substantially reduced Ashraf Ghani’s final valid vote total;

to what degree this represented a triumph of counter-fraud measures or the possible disenfranchisement of 

voters attempting to pass through biometric controls that 

were being enforced for the first time remains unclear in 

the absence of third-party observation capable of corroborating conditions at the polling booth. But the lack of 

clarity about some key commission decisions, the lack 

of trust on the part of the opposition candidates, and the 

political stakes riding on an electoral loss all contributed 

to a contested outcome and a postelection political crisis 

that would ultimately be resolved only through negotiations outside the formal electoral process.
USIP.ORG 33

Analyzing Political Trends

in the Results Data

There are still many gaps in the available data and unresolved questions about the IEC’s and ECC’s actions that

produced the currently available final vote figures for 

Afghanistan’s 2019 presidential election. Because many 

different access conditions, administrative actions, and 

validation decisions contributed to producing the final 

results published by the IEC, electoral results data offer 

an incomplete picture of underlying political organizations, movements, and voter attitudes. However, taking 

the results as given, with all the caveats about the available data in mind, we can attempt an analysis of some 

of the major political trends observable in comparison 

to prior elections, including changes in participation and 

political preferences, the role of third-party candidates, 

geographic patterns of political support, and differences 

between male and female voters.

RECORD LOW PARTICIPATION

The absolute number of final valid votes in the 2019

election, approximately 1.82 million, is the lowest recorded in an Afghan election to date, equivalent to roughly 

a quarter of the final vote total for the 2014 election and 

approximately 18 percent of voter registrations in 2019. 

While this figure is clearly indicative of a steep decline 

in public participation, decoupling and evaluating all 

the potential reasons for this drop is not easy. Differing 

requirements for registration and differing criteria for a 

valid vote mean that a count of “votes in 2014” measures 

a qualitatively different activity than a count of “votes 

in 2019.” The lack of a fixed voter registry in 2014 also

means that detailed turnout rates versus registration 

rates cannot be calculated for those elections, as can be 

done for the ones held in 2018 and 2019.118

Although they operate under different voting systems 

and elect different types of candidates to different 

roles, the 2018 parliamentary elections offer a closer 

point of comparison both administratively and temporally to the polls held in 2019. Voter registration 

numbers increased between the election periods, 

but the existence of a common baseline of polling 

center–based registration lists means that it is possible 

to evaluate the general decline in turnout between 

parliamentary and presidential elections, as figure 2 

does at the provincial level. However, the broader 

criteria for accepting non-biometrically verified votes in 

2018 again make it difficult to disentangle the effects of 

tighter ballot requirements in 2019 from lower levels of 

individual voter participation as two potentially competing explanations for the general decline in turnout.

In addition to the security threats and registration barriers that deterred participants, the 2019 election was 

the first in which no accompanying elections were held 

for provincial council representatives alongside the national presidential election. Although the formal powers 

of the provincial councils are limited, they still represent 

important potential avenues for brokering relations with 

the provincial and national government.119 Local candidates who might otherwise have contested these races 

had no opportunity to do so in 2019, meaning that any 

national presidential campaign would likely have had 

to provide its own resources or find other inducements 

to mobilize local political networks to turn out the vote. 

Owing to the compressed campaign period and the 

national political elite’s focus on peace talks and new 

power-sharing formulations, the campaigns’ ability to 
34 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

activate local networks in this election appears to have 

been limited, particularly among candidates lacking the 

advantages of incumbency. Following a strategic logic 

that suggests candidates should give at least as much 

priority to influencing the central vote-counting process 

and the power-sharing talks that follow as they do to 

local vote mobilization, their motivation to take on these 

additional organizing costs may also have been limited.

An alternative measure of participation can be gauged 

by comparing a provincial (or district or center) share 

in total national voter registration and that same province’s share in the final national total vote tally (see 

figure 3). Assuming that political engagement in the 

registration process and participation in voting are 

closely correlated, one would expect each province to 

be represented in both registrants and voters in roughly the same proportions at the national level. However, 

many factors may lead to variations between a province’s share in total national voter registration and its 

share in the national vote tally, including, potentially, 

changing access conditions between the registration 

period and the voting period that could limit voting or 

the introduction of distortions in the registration process. But the comparison does clearly show some provinces’ relative “overrepresentation” in the final national 

vote tally vis-à-vis their share of the potential registered 

electorate, and the “underrepresentation” of others.

The overrepresented provinces—those where the province’s share of the national vote total exceeded their

share of the national registration total—include some 

Note: Diagonal line represents hypothetical perfect correlation; all points below this line represent a relative drop in turnout between 2018 parliamentary and 2019 presidential election. X- and y-intercept lines are 2019 national medians. Preliminary results reporting data is used due to discrepancies 

in final 2018 parliamentary results data for Kabul as published by the Independent Election Commission. Ghazni province is ommitted due to the

absence of parliamentary elections held there in 2018.

Figure 2. Provincial-Level Turnout Comparisons, 2018 and 2019
USIP.ORG 35

of the obvious major population centers, such as 

Kabul and Nangarhar, but also the central Hazarajat 

highland provinces of Bamiyan and Daikundi, which 

also reported the highest levels of turnout in the 2018 

parliamentary elections (although turnout rates there 

also fell by comparison with the 2019 turnout). These

latter two provinces together represent only 3.5 percent of total national voter registration (and around 

3.2 percent of the estimated national population) but 

provided 9.9 percent of all valid votes in 2019. All major candidates sought to include representatives from 

the Hazara minority on their ticket as the population 

represents a key potential swing bloc that has been 

heavily engaged in the post-2001 Afghan state-building project.120

AN INCREASINGLY URBAN ELECTORATE

One impact of the reduction in polling sites and 

shrinking access to the vote noted earlier is the 

growing overrepresentation of urban centers in the 

makeup of the Afghan electorate. Although urbanization, population movements, and the patterns of 

urban environments are often understood to produce 

changes in social and political behaviors, widely 

varying definitions are used to classify a given area 

or population as “urban,” “rural,” or some mixture 

of both. Classification may be based on different 

political or administrative structures or status (which 

may or may not reflect the underlying areal characteristics), population size or density, land usage or built 

infrastructure assessments, and other factors.

Note: A log-10 scale is used to more clearly visualize relative differences between provinces, as Kabul alone comprises nearly 20 percent of both 

the national vote and national registration. Diagonal line represents hypothetical perfect correlation; all points below this line represent a relative 

under-representation against registration in the final valid vote, while points above the line are effectively over-represented. The X- and Y-intercept

lines are the 2019 national median. 

Figure 3. Provincial Shares of Votes and Registration, 2019 
36 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

The CSO/ANSIA provides both “urban” and “rural” population estimates in its annual district-level populati

reporting but does not provide details on its methods 

for defining each type of population. The UN Food an

Agriculture Organization conducted a land use survey 

using images collected (in 2010) with satellite mapping 

technology to arrive at area calculations for urban settlements and irrigated farmland; this approach offers the 

alternative possibility of calculating and ranking district 

population density based on total population against 

settled land area (though with growing distortions over 

time caused by the decade lag behind current settlement patterns).121 The geolocation data for the current

set of IEC polling centers can also be used to construct 

a density index based on distances between centers, 

with thresholds assigned—either nationwide or relative 

to the center’s home province or district—to classify the 

center and its catchment area of voters as highly densely 

co-located with other centers (characteristic of an urban 

environment), highly remote (assumed to fall in more rural 

areas), or within some normal range for the area.122

The simplest available method of categorizing a set of

“urban” areas in Afghanistan takes the boundaries of the 

thirty-four provincial capital districts, where the Afghan 

government’s ability to exert control has been the most 

consistent since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, and classifies the remainder of the country’s districts as “rural”

outliers.123 The increasing overrepresentation of the

provincial capitals in the electorate shows a clear trend 

line over the past five years. The CSO estimates that th

provincial capital centers collectively comprise around 32 

percent of the national population, and Kabul city alone 

accounts for around 14 percent of the national total; the 

WorldPop project estimates the provincial capitals’ collective share at only around 29.2 percent of the national total 

and Kabul’s share at 13 percent.124 However, the provincial 

capitals account for approximately 35 percent of the 2019 

voter registry and 41.4 percent of the final vote, making 

them overrepresented in both the potential and actual 

electorate. By comparison, votes from the provincial 

capitals accounted for 29.7 percent of the final 2009 

presidential election results, 28.6 percent of the final 

2010 parliamentary vote, 30.6 percent of the final 2014 

second-round runoff vote, and 38 percent of the total 

preliminary 2018 parliamentary vote. The national capital

of Kabul—where Ghani and Abdullah roughly split the

vote—accounted for 12.4 percent of total national voter 

registration in 2019 but 15.6 percent of the final valid vote.

Below the national level, there is more variation in the 

relative dominance of a province’s capital in the overall 

provincial vote total. To take a few examples, final valid

votes from the provincial capitals of Badghis, Balkh, and 

Faryab provinces were all particularly overrepresented 

in comparison to those districts’ share of total provincial 

voter registration, while outlying districts contributed 

greater shares of the vote than the provincial capitals 

of Ghor, Kandahar, and Logar. With the exception of

the provincial capital of Maidan Wardak—where Ghani

secured more than half the vote, despite losing the 

province overall by a large margin to Abdullah—the 

usually sizable contribution of the provincial centers to 

the total provincial vote meant that a candidate’s share 

of the capital district vote and share of the overall provincial vote generally tracked each other closely. Overall, 

Abdullah received a larger share of his own total votes 

from provincial capital centers than Ghani (44.5 percent

and 38.2 percent, respectively) but a smaller share of 

the votes recorded in the provincial capitals than Ghani

(42.4 percent and 46.7 percent, respectively).

POLITICAL REALIGNMENTS SINCE 2014

After five years of internal disputes within the National 

Unity Government framework, the 2019 election developed into a rerun of the 2014 presidential electio

runoff in which Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah

first contested directly against each other. In the first 

round of the 2014 elections, Abdullah had secured 

a larger plurality, with around 45 percent of the vote 

against 31 percent for Ghani, but Ghani ultimately wa

able to broaden his coalition and consolidate support 

in the two-person runoff held later that summer, taking 

55 percent of the second-round vote.
USIP.ORG 37

Figure 4. Ghani Vote Share Changes by District, 2014 and 2019

Note: Points are districts; 2019 data has been reaggregated to match 2014 district boundaries. Points below the diagonal line are a loss in vote share 

in 2019 compared to 2014, points above are an increase in vote share. Ghani received more than 50-percent support in both elections in points in

the upper right quadrant, less than 50 percent in both elections in the lower left quadrant. 
38 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

During the intervening five years, several of Ghani’s and

Abdullah’s supporters shifted their allegiances (in some 

cases multiple times). The most notable exemplar of such

a shift was First Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum, 

who spent an extended period of time in exile in Turkey

between 2017 and 2018 after facing charges of physically 

abusing a political rival in Jawzjan province. Both at home 

and abroad, Dostum participated in a series of opposition 

political coalitions despite nominally continuing in the vice 

presidential role.125 Dostum split fully with his former running mate and endorsed Abdullah in the 2019 campaign, 

and his former chief of staff, Enaytullah Babar Farahmand, 

served as Abdullah’s first vice presidential nominee.

Dostum’s political base in the northern provinces of 

Jawzjan, Faryab, and Takhar saw some of the biggest

shifts in vote share away from Ghani and to Abdullah

between 2014 and 2019, as can be seen in figure 4, which 

summarizes shifts at the district level. Ghani received

roughly 11 percent of his final vote total in 2014 from these 

three provinces, where Dostum held the greatest political influence; in 2019, votes from these three provinces 

represented around 14 percent of Abdullah’s final total. 

Dostum’s position as the leader of one of the most cohesive national vote banks appears to have been reinforced 

by these elections—in the power-sharing deal reached 

in May, he was recognized with the title “marshal of 

Afghanistan,” the only one of Abdullah’s coalition of supporters to be singled out by name in the text of the agreement reached with Ghani. The relative influence of thes

provinces in the national total vote was reduced when 

compared to that of other provinces (from 10.1 percent of 

the final vote in 2014 to 6.9 percent in 2019), however.

The other high-profile national power broker to switch

sides between the 2014 and 2019 elections was former 

Balkh governor Mohammad Atta Noor. Noor had supported Abdullah in the 2014 race; both are officially members of the same Jamiat-e-Islami political party, although 

the party is highly factionalized, and both have jockeyed 

for leadership roles within it. Noor’s threats to mobilize 

in potentially violent support of Abdullah’s contestation 

of the second-round results in 2014 was a major factor 

in pushing international actors to intervene and mediate 

the disputed outcome, leading to the eventual National 

Unity Government agreement.126 After those elections

tensions remained high between Noor and President 

Ghani over control of Balkh province, where Noor had

consolidated power since 2001. Noor rebuffed efforts to 

nominate a replacement but eventually resigned from his 

long-held position as governor in March 2018, and continues to dominate provincial politics in Balkh.127 Forces 

loyal to Noor also clashed with police aligned with the 

Kabul government when Ghani attempted to appoint a

new provincial police chief in March 2019.128 Noor initially 

floated the idea of running for president himself, and at 

various points was reported to be backing other candidates, but ultimately withheld a public endorsement. 

After election day, Noor began to offer more tacit support 

to Ghani, however, disavowing the likelihood of a second

round and this time publicly criticizing Abdullah’s supporters’ protests and the delays in the finalization of results.129

Balkh saw a disproportionately large number of polling 

center closures on election day 2019, and its turnout rates 

fell substantially when compared to levels of voting in 

2018 and 2014. In the last presidential election, 4.9 percent of the final national vote was cast in Balkh province, 

where Abdullah won approximately two-thirds of the vote; 

in 2019, Balkh contributed less than 4 percent of the final 

national vote. Abdullah was still able to secure 55.3 percent of the vote there, suggesting that, if Atta did indeed 

unofficially mobilize in support of Ghani this cycle, the

Jamiat party, of which he and Abdullah are both nominally 

members, remains factionalized and Atta’s influence over 

it is not unchallenged, even within Balkh. However, the reduced turnout and reduced share of the vote (in part also 

due to stronger showings here by some of the other second-tier candidates) in Balkh reduced Abdullah’s chances 

for reducing Ghani’s margin of votes at the national level

Outside these swings, most areas of the country saw 

generally consistent patterns of support for Ghani and

Abdullah between 2014 and 2019, with many districts 
USIP.ORG 39

Table 3. Candidate Vote Distribution by Province Province Code 

Province 

Name 

Total Final Votes 

Ghani Votes Abdullah Votes

Hekmatyar 

Votes Nabil Votes

Other Candidate 

Votes

Total Non-Ghani 

/ Abdullah Votes

No. % No. % No. % No. % No. % No. %

01 Kabul 34,9082 16,6619 47.7 14,1881 40.6 14,904 4.27 9,056 2.59 16,622 4.76 40,582 11.6 

02 Kapisa 14,114 4,599 32.6 7,089 50.2 1,814 12.9 56 0.397 556 3.94 2,426 17.2 

03 Parwan 33,211 7,783 23.4 20,448 61.6 3,324 10.0 257 0.774 1,399 4.21 4,980 15.0 

04 Maidan Wardak 19,901 1,279 6.43 17,139 86.1 274 1.38 248 1.25 961 4.83 1,483 7.45 

05 Logar 14,196 13,344 94.0 503 3.54 216 1.52 10 0.0704 123 0.866 349 2.46 

06 Nangarhar 20,4356 188,462 92.2 4,949 2.42 9,515 4.66 221 0.108 1,209 0.592 10,945 5.36 

07 Laghman 25,930 22,769 87.8 469 1.81 2,360 9.10 46 0.177 286 1.10 2,692 10.4 

08 Panjshir 18,393 2,079 11.3 15,343 83.4 110 0.598 92 0.500 769 4.18 971 5.28 

09 Baghlan 30,258 5,830 19.3 21,009 69.4 1,646 5.44 311 1.03 1,462 4.83 3,419 11.3 

10 Bamiyan 82,452 15,021 18.2 55,795 67.7 1,859 2.25 4,120 5.00 5,657 6.86 11,636 14.1 

11 Ghazni 51,923 19,259 37.1 26,946 51.9 685 1.32 2,941 5.66 2,092 4.03 5,718 11.0 

12 Paktika 31,512 29,499 93.6 828 2.63 794 2.52 121 0.384 270 0.857 1,185 3.76 

13 Paktia 38,386 35,657 92.9 1,643 4.28 727 1.89 81 0.211 278 0.724 1,086 2.83 

14 Khost 77,866 75,109 96.5 787 1.01 1,625 2.09 72 0.0925 273 0.351 1,970 2.53 

15 Kunar 64,205 54,907 85.5 5,072 7.90 3,417 5.32 498 0.776 311 0.484 4,226 6.58 

16 Nuristan 10,869 6,290 57.9 3,516 32.3 932 8.57 31 0.285 100 0.920 1,063 9.78 

17 Badakhshan 70,127 15,234 21.7 39,246 56.0 6,368 9.08 432 0.616 8,847 12.6 15,647 22.3 

18 Takhar 61,835 8,583 13.9 49,516 80.1 1,407 2.28 303 0.490 2,026 3.28 3,736 6.04 

19 Kunduz 12,676 3,636 28.7 8,074 63.7 290 2.29 70 0.552 606 4.78 966 7.62 

20 Samangan 37,393 7,123 19.0 28,392 75.9 687 1.84 264 0.706 927 2.48 1,878 5.02 

21 Balkh 72,345 24,073 33.3 40,078 55.4 1,448 2.00 3,163 4.37 3,583 4.95 8,194 11.3 

22 Sar-e-Pul 34,202 6,154 18.0 26,323 77.0 219 0.640 581 1.70 925 2.70 1,725 5.04 

23 Ghor 48,540 21,553 44.4 19,849 40.9 1,127 2.32 3,449 7.11 2,562 5.28 7,138 14.7 

24 Daikundi 98,170 29,742 30.3 62,521 63.7 303 0.309 3,122 3.18 2,482 2.53 5,907 6.02 

25 Uruzgan 5,434 3,518 64.7 936 17.2 525 9.66 135 2.48 320 5.89 980 18.0 

26 Zabul 5,983 5,380 89.9 262 4.38 194 3.24 37 0.618 110 1.84 341 5.70 

27 Kandahar 68,373 59,467 87.0 3,667 5.36 3,207 4.69 373 0.546 1,659 2.43 5,239 7.66 

28 Jawzjan 37,710 7,305 19.4 29,006 76.9 248 0.658 225 0.597 926 2.46 1,399 3.71 

29 Faryab 26,596 5,207 19.6 20,476 77.0 175 0.658 181 0.681 557 2.09 913 3.43 

30 Helmand 38,137 31,072 81.5 4,878 12.8 1,139 2.99 279 0.732 769 2.02 2,187 5.73 

31 Badghis 9,664 2,374 24.6 6,209 64.2 336 3.48 80 0.828 665 6.88 1,081 11.2 

32 Herat 116,210 34,199 29.4 56,117 48.3 7,504 6.46 2,968 2.55 15,422 13.3 25,894 22.3 

33 Farah 4,541 3,552 78.2 539 11.9 220 4.84 21 0.462 209 4.60 450 9.91 

34 Nimroz 9,801 7,186 73.3 1,482 15.1 641 6.54 77 0.786 415 4.23 1,133 11.6 

National total 1,824,391 923,864 50.6 720,988 39.5 70,240 3.85 3,3921 1.86 75,378 4.13 179,539 9.84 

Notes: Based on final results as reported by the IEC. Ashraf Ghani was the provincial vote leader in rows highlighted in teal. Abdullah Abdullah was

the provincial leader in rows highlighted in purple.
40 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

effectively polarized in support of one or the other 

candidate. Kabul province, with the greatest concentration of votes, was closely contested; as in 2014, Ghani

saw the highest levels of support in the south and east 

of the country. Although Abdullah’s vote totals exceeded Ghani’s in more provinces across the country, the

margins were smaller than in the areas where Ghani ran

strongest. In absolute terms, after Kabul, the large vote 

pools in the provinces of Herat, Daikundi, and Bamiyan 

provided Abdullah the greatest number of votes, but he 

failed to dominate these areas in the way Ghani dominated in Nangarhar and Kandahar, as shown in table 3

OTHER CANDIDATES

Although eighteen candidates initially registered to 

contest the 2019 election, including some with national 

political profiles, the contest was essentially a two-person race between the incumbent Ghani and previous

runner-up, Abdullah. Second-tier candidates secured

their lowest share of the vote in any presidential election 

to date, including the first 2004 election, which saw the 

election of Hamid Karzai. Several of the competing candidates dropped out prior to election day, including former

national security adviser Hanif Atmar, who had initially received the backing of former president Karzai and other 

opposition figures such as Atta Noor but who withdrew 

after failing to reach agreement over the distribution of 

power among his supporters.130 Third-place and lower

candidates collectively secured only 9.8 percent of the 

final vote, compared to 23.9 percent on the first round of 

the 2014 presidential election, when no candidate was 

returning as an incumbent and then president Karzai’s 

endorsement of a successor was left ambiguous.131

Former insurgent leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and

former National Directorate of Security intelligence chief

Rahmatullah Nabil came in respectively in third and 

fourth place in the 2019 presidential contest, receiving 

3.9 percent and 1.9 percent of the total final vote. In absolute terms, the largest number of votes for Hekmatyar 

came from Kabul province, although he also received 

between 9 and 10 percent of the votes in the surrounding central provinces of Kapisa, Laghman, Parwan, 

Uruzgan, and Wardak. Nabil’s candidacy also received

the majority of its votes in Kabul but saw its best relative 

performance in Ghor province; Nabil’s first vice presidential running mate, former Lt. Gen. Murad Ali Murad

is a native of that province. Although they received few 

votes elsewhere, candidates Abdul Latif Pedram (a former presidential candidate and two-term parliamentarian 

from 2005 to 2018) and Faramarz Tamana (a former

Foreign Ministry official and university lecturer) achieved 

sizable support in their home provinces of Badakhshan 

and Herat (10.3 percent and 10.9 percent of the respective provincial vote totals), reducing the share available 

for the top two candidates in those provinces.

Even if Abdullah had captured the entirety of the nonGhani vote in 2019, he would still have fallen short of

an absolute majority. Had he taken all of the non-Ghani

vote, he would have come within a percentage point of 

achieving an absolute majority of votes, further raising 

the stakes for the vote validation process had it produced the opportunity to contest in a two-man runoff. 

(Ghani’s advantages of incumbency might still have

provided an edge in the negotiation of new coalitions 

with the other eliminated candidates, however.) Had 

those second-tier candidates turned out more voters 

nationwide—increasing the total vote denominator—as 

they had in past presidential election rounds, Ghani’s

margin over a 50 percent majority also could have 

potentially been reduced further. However, few candidates mobilized for the elections, pushing instead 

for the formation of an interim government and the 

renegotiation of power sharing in conjunction with or in 

parallel to the US-Taliban negotiations proce

Had [Abdullah] taken all of the non-Ghani vote, he would have come within a percentage point of 

achieving an absolute majority of votes, further raising the stakes for the vote validation process had it 

produced the opportunity to contest in a two-man runoff.
USIP.ORG 41

COMPARISONS TO 2018 

PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

Afghanistan’s parliamentary elections are held under a 

single non-transferable vote (SNTV) process in whic

multiple candidates compete for multiple open seats in 

a single constituency (in Afghanistan’s case, an entire 

province, and two at-large national constituencies for 

members of the Kuchi nomad and Sikh minority communities) and voters are given a single vote to allocate

to their top choice. Candidates are then elected in 

rank order until all available seats are filled. A quota 

system also guarantees seats for a number of female 

candidates from each province, an effectively parallel 

contest that presents voters with a further choice as 

to whether to allocate their vote to the race between 

male or female candidates.

The SNTV system limits the ability of political parti

to effectively organize voters in support of a broad 

slate of candidates.132 With the threshold required to 

secure one of several available seats unknown until 

after the votes are tallied, parties must risk either 

concentrating all their supporters’ votes behind a 

single candidate (whereas if supporters’ votes were 

distributed more broadly, they might be able to elect 

multiple candidates and so form a larger bloc more 

representative of their actual size in the electorate 

and capable of leveraging the party’s interests more 

effectively in parliament) or splitting their votes too 

thinly among multiple candidates (who may then fail to 

achieve the threshold necessary to secure any seats, 

even if collectively they represent the majority of 

votes cast in a constituency). SNTV thereby produce

a large number of “wasted votes” cast for candidates 

who are unable to secure a seat but, if said votes 

were reallocated, could potentially alter the outcome 

of the race. Overall, votes for all winning candidates 

have represented around a third of all votes cast in 

Afghanistan’s three parliamentary elections, and many 

elected parliamentarians secure seats with singledigit percentage shares of the total vote.

One result of this system—which was introduced in part 

at the urging of then president Hamid Karzai and other 

proponents of the centralized presidential system—has 

been the further weakening of Afghan political party 

structures and the personalization of political organizations, furthering the dynamic of individual high-profile 

figures building loose coalitions of supporters and flexibly shifting their political alliances as needed.133 Although 

many have personal ties to existing organizations and 

interest groups, the overwhelming majority of parliamentary candidates in 2018 contested as independents 

without formal party affiliation. For the 2019 presidential election, the IEC entirely omitted party affiliation as 

a candidate identifier on the ballot, and although he 

has built a strong network of supporters, Ghani, like

President Karzai before him, has not associated himself 

with any party brand. The formal relationship of the competing parliamentary candidates and the presidential

candidates that followed them a year later is difficult to 

establish, then, even in cases where strong affiliations or 

patron-client relationships may exist.

As figure 5 shows, the share of votes cast at polling 

centers for candidates who won election in the 2018 parliamentary elections was, with some exceptions, largely 

not predictive of vote share reported at those same 

polling centers for the eventual winner of the 2019 presidential election, Ashraf Ghani. The only province with 

strongly positively correlated relationship between votes 

for the winning parliamentary delegation and Ghani

appears to be Ghor province, which also shows signs

of bimodal polarization in polling centers consistently 

voting for winning or losing candidates in each election. 

In other provinces the relationship appears to be either 

negative (as in Helmand, Kapisa, and Parwan—polling 

centers that voted most heavily for winning parliamentary candidates in these provinces were least likely to vote 

for Ghani in 2019) or effectively flat and uncorrelated.

The relationship between votes for winning candidates

in 2018 and votes for Abdullah Abdullah in 2019 are also 

uncorrelated in almost all cases, in most cases showing 

the converse of the vote share for Ghani
42 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

Figure 5. Votes for Winning Candidates in, 2018 and 2019

Note: Points are polling centers. Preliminary data used for 2018 parliamentary election results due to discrepancies in final results data for Kabul as 

published by the Independent Election Commission.
USIP.ORG 43

One possible explanation for this lack of a relationship 

may be that different sets of voters turned out in the 

two election periods. Another hypothesis is that voters 

see no connection between their choice of parliamentary representative and the presidency, either because 

of the different roles of the president and parliamentarians or because of the staggered election periods. A 

third possibility is that even with the same set of voters 

casting ballots under the SNTV system and the presidential system, outcomes will be different because o

the distortions introduced by the former system. Finally, 

it is possible that variations in vote invalidations as a 

result of the 2019 audit obscure relationships with the 

2018 vote. In any case, President Ghani’s political base

of support appears to be largely disconnected from 

that of the legislators who have been elected to the 

current parliamentary term.134

MALE AND FEMALE VOTING PATTERNS

Afghan election procedures segregate polling stations 

for male and female voters. Although no gender details 

were published for the polling station list in the 2018 

parliamentary elections, the availability of the relevant 

data for the 2014 and 2019 presidential elections allows 

evaluation of any gender-based variation in turnout and 

political preferences, if we assume that all votes from 

a polling station were in fact cast by members of the 

assigned gender.135 (In 2019, at least, this requirement 

should have been further reinforced by polling station–

based registration lists.) Female voters represented 

34.5 percent of the registered electorate in 2019 and 

31.5 percent of all votes cast; in the 2014 first round, 

votes from women made up 32.6 percent of the final 

vote and 37.03 percent of the final valid vote for the 

second-round runoff.

In 2019, Daikundi was the only province to have reported that more than 50 percent of its votes were cast by 

women; in half of Afghanistan’s thirty-four provinces, 

less than a third of votes came from women, with the 

greatest gender imbalances reported in the southern 

and eastern parts of the country. Female registration 

did not differ notably between the urban provincial 

capital districts and more rural outlying districts, with 

women forming slightly less than a third of registered 

voters in both types of districts. Jawzjan, which together with Daikundi and Bamiyan had the highest share of 

registered female voters, was the only province where 

votes from urban female voters constituted a significant 

bloc, constituting nearly 40 percent of all votes provincewide and nearly 50 percent of all votes from the 

provincial capital of Sheberghan.13

Overall, male and female voter preferences aligned 

closely in choice of candidates in both 2014 and 2019. 

While there are some notable outliers at the polling 

center level, in most cases where Ghani won large

shares of the available male voters, he also won large 

shares of female voters, and vice versa for Abdullah. The

shares of a candidate’s own vote total received from 

women voters—in other words, how much they might 

rely on women voters as a portion of their available coalition of voters in a province, district, or polling station—

also largely tracked proportionally to the share of the 

overall votes reported for women voters in the province. 

Most outliers were derived from cases where a very 

small number of overall votes received by one candidate 

gave the few female votes more proportional influence.

The potential social restrictions on access by male

observers to polling stations used by women and the 

lower rates of participation on the part of Afghan women voters have frequently led to concerns that female 

polling stations could be particularly vulnerable sites 

for fraud and ballot stuffing. In 2014, votes from female 

polling stations constituted around 41 percent of all 

invalidated votes, compared to around 37 percent of 

all valid votes, indicative of the overrepresentation of 

female polling stations among those that were invalidated in the second round audit.

In 2019, female polling stations represented 37 percent 

of all open polling stations but 48.7 percent of all polling 

stations whose results were invalidated by the IEC during 
44 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

its first audit; in the provinces of Baghlan, Paktia, and 

Uruzgan, the results from more than a third of all open

female polling stations were invalidated, and in Paktika 

province the results from nearly half of all open female 

polling stations were invalidated. Although provinces 

diverged, with some auditing higher proportions of their 

open male polling stations and others higher proportions 

of open female polling stations, invalidation rates for the 

female polling stations that were audited were consistently higher across the country than invalidation rates for 

the male polling stations that were audited (see figure 6).

Concerns were raised prior to and during the vote 

that biometric verification requirements—including 

photographing voters, a potentially sensitive cultural 

practice—could deter women’s participation in the 

elections.137 It is possible that these tighter requirements contributed to greater female vote invalidation 

rates in the audit, with real votes thrown out for lack of 

supporting biometric information. It is also possible that 

IEC auditors correctly identified cases of fraudulent ballot manipulation at otherwise poorly monitored female 

voting stations. This underscores the need for more

third-party monitoring both on election day and in the 

vote validation process. It also highlights the challenge 

for Afghan women seeking to participate in the electoral process to have their votes counted.

Points are provinces. Points above the diagonal line saw a greater share of audited female stations invalidated than audited male stations, while 

points below the diagonal line saw a greater share of audited male stations invalidated. X- and Y- intercepts are overall national invalidation rates for 

male and female stations.

Figure 6. Male Versus Female Audited Polling Station Invalidation Rates in First IEC Audit 
USIP.ORG 45

Conclusion

This study has sought to clearly organize as much available information as possible from Afghanistan’s recent

elections, drawing on the less structured material initially 

released by the IEC, to explain the practices and factors 

behind the generation of those figures, as far as can be 

ascertained from public reporting and insights gathered from other informed observers. It has also sought 

to present some high-level findings from the available 

election results in order to contribute to a better understanding of Afghanistan’s domestic political dynamics as 

currently structured through its current electoral system.

While there are many more subjects for statistical analysis yet to be fully investigated beyond the initial explorations in this report, there are limits to the insights 

available from Afghanistan’s published electoral data. 

This is partly due to the many unanswered questions

about the details and origins of the data but more 

significantly to the many political initiatives and forces 

not captured by the formal electoral system. Elections 

remain a contested mechanism for apportioning political authority in Afghanistan, and those who participate 

in them have accepted electoral outcomes only as the 

opening bid in a continued negotiation that draws on 

multiple sources of power and legitimacy.

New registration and voter verification procedures, if 

implemented with appropriate preparation and clear 

communication with stakeholders and the public, 

offer the potential for greater confidence than in past 

elections in the integrity and validity of final 2019 

vote figures and their correspondence to real voters’ 

preferences. But the controls introduced for the 2019 

presidential election also pose an accessibility trade-off 

to the extent that they may deter or deny participation 

to some voters, who have no alternative recourse in 

the absence of any absentee voting or day-of registration options. Afghan officials faced serious security and 

logistical challenges in administering the 2019 election. 

But the closure of a polling center, whether as part of a 

deliberate planning decision made before election day 

or as an unplanned disruption on election day itself, 

effectively disenfranchises any voters in the center’s 

assigned catchment area.

As access has diminished nationwide because of 

Taliban insurgent threats and administrative retrenchment, the Afghan electorate has become increasingly

centered in the provincial capitals and urban areas of 

the country, leaving many segments of the population 

unrepresented and unable even to attempt to exercise 

their franchise. Even before the application of audit 

scrutiny, both leading candidates in the 2019 presidential election lost access to potential voter bases that 

had provided a third or more of their votes in 2014, in 

Ghani’s case predominantly as a result of the dropping

of centers from pre-election plans, in Abdullah’s case 

predominantly because of center closures on election day itself. The historically low levels of votes for

second-tier candidates made for a two-person race 

between the two returning candidates, which appears 

to have boosted the incumbent’s ability to secure an 

outright majority on the first round.

Many factors, including worsening security, polling 

center closures, tighter voter registration requirements, 

and modest campaign mobilization efforts, all combined 

to produce an outcome that suggests Afghan public participation in the 2019 presidential election fell to the lowest levels observed since the beginning of the current 

constitutional structure fifteen years ago. This situation

raises serious questions as to the representativeness of 
46 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

the current democratic political order. However, Afghan 

electoral law sets no minimum threshold of participation for establishing a valid election, and as a matter 

of political strategy, the winners of any election can be 

expected to assert their legal authorities and claims to 

public legitimacy no matter how small their apparent 

“mandate.” Although he has now taken steps toward an 

initial power-sharing compromise with his electoral rival, 

President Ghani wasted little time after securing reelection in moving to further consolidate control over the

state apparatus as he sought to push back against both 

his armed and unarmed domestic rivals.138

The winner-take-all stakes of the Afghan presidency

also pushes the runner-up candidate to use any available strategy to force open alternative routes to power 

not provided for by an election that produces clearly 

defined winners and losers. Following the conclusion 

of voting, and as his second-place position became 

apparent, Abdullah Abdullah pursued a strategy of 

seeking to invalidate as many of his rival’s votes as 

possible in order to force a runoff election that might 

give him an opportunity to forge a new political coalition against Ghani or, alternatively, more time to open

power-sharing negotiations with Ghani

While Abdullah was ultimately unsuccessful in his 

vote disqualification strategy, the polling centers that 

supported Ghani came under the greatest scrutiny

and bore the brunt of most invalidation decisions. 

Assessments of the available information surrounding 

audit decisions do not appear to support the contention that Abdullah was in a position to overtake Ghani

as the outright front-runner in the race. They do, however, reveal some still unexplained discrepancies in

the outcomes of the first and second audits that should 

Poll workers wait for ballots to count in Bazarak, in the Panjshir valley of Afghanistan, on August 28, 2019. (Photo by Jim Huylebroek/New York Times
USIP.ORG 47

have been the subject of greater scrutiny or clearer 

explanations by the IEC and ECC.

The lack of transparency on the part of the ECC in its

decision making and on the part of the IEC as to the 

actual adjustments made as a result of the second 

audit remains a serious concern and a liability for any 

efforts to establish broader trust and acceptance of 

election results. The few changes actually made between preliminary and final results means that the most

decisive adjustments were those made to the initial, 

non-biometrically verified and nonaudited vote totals 

reported at each polling station. But the original details 

of these provisional pre-audit vote totals have not been 

made public by the IEC, thus forestalling any comparisons with previous elections’ preliminary results.

Outside and domestic observers who prioritize the electoral process as the fairest and most sustainable means 

of adjudicating transfers of power between competing 

interest groups must continue to demand transparency 

and clear public communications around vote counting, 

validation, and invalidation decisions by the two electoral bodies. Though a great deal of past attention and

a great deal of public funding have been focused on 

the risk of ballot fraud at the local or individual level, the 

past three national elections have all ultimately been 

resolved through a highly centralized results aggregation, verification, and tabulation process, without the 

establishment in advance of clear standards for adjudication and reconciliation, and with major gaps and 

discrepancies in the published final results that in many 

cases remain unresolved and unexplained.

Technical electoral reform adjustments are unlikely to

be sufficient in and of themselves to achieve broader 

political buy-in for the adoption of the electoral rules of 

competition. Process disputes in Afghanistan’s current political system are ultimately disputes about the 

outcomes produced by those processes, and resolving 

them requires concessions—willing or unwilling, and 

often extraconstitutional—on the part of status quo beneficiaries. This report initially posited that an underlying

source of the now decades-long civil war in Afghanistan 

is the disconnect between the outcomes produced by 

the formal political system and the distribution of power 

and other sources of legitimacy available to actors who 

lose out under the existing formal rules but who retain 

the capability to exercise vetoes over it through means 

or threat of force. The outcome of the 2019 presidential

election, and the prospect of new negotiations with 

the Taliban and other Afghan parties, underscore the

enormous political uncertainty facing Afghanistan. That

uncertainty can only be resolved through a renewed 

negotiation among all major Afghan political actors to 

establish a new consensus on the rules for allocating 

political power within the country.
48 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

Notes

Although the author bears sole responsibility for all errors of fact or judgment in this report, he would like to express his thanks to the 

following peer reviewers for graciously sharing their feedback and recommendations for improving the report: Anna Larson, James 

Long, Roger Helms, Robert Irish, Grant Kippen, Ben Ngumi, Alex Thier, Graeme Smith, Andrew Watkins, Daniel Weggeland, and Br

Vogt. He also thanks Asma Ebadi and Lucy Stevenson-Yang for their translation and research assistance; the Independent Election

Commission for releasing elections data in a public form that allows open analysis; the anonymous election observer sources who 

generously provided additional data sources; the Afghanistan Analysts Network, Afghanistan Elections Data, Map Sync, and OCHA

Afghanistan projects for their work on collecting valuable elections reporting and data; former colleagues at Democracy International 

for providing the opportunity to gain firsthand experience as an observer to the 2010 and 2014 Afghan elections; and colleagues at 

the United States Institute of Peace, including Belquis Ahmadi, Marjan Nahavandi, Scott Smith, Johnny Walsh, Andrew Wilder, S

Worden, Ehsan Zia, and many others, for their guidance, support, mentorship, and patience as he worked on developing this project.

1. For more on these themes, see, among other sources, Noah Coburn and Anna Larson, Derailing Democracy in Afghanistan: 

Elections in an Unstable Political Landscape (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013); and Colin Cookman, “Elections as a

Disputed Power-Sharing Mechanism in Afghanistan,” SAIS Review of International Affairs 38, no. 1 (2018)

2. Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 302

3. Although parliament has the power to approve budgets, these are developed by the Ministry of Finance, and Afghanistan is 

highly dependent on external financing. Parliament’s powers of appointment confirmation have also largely been bypassed 

through the use of acting ministers. For more on the role of parliamentarians and their relationships with voters, see Noah 

Coburn, “Connecting with Kabul: The Importance of the Wolesi Jirga Election and Local Political Networks in Afghanistan,” AR

Parliamentary Election Brief 1, Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, May 2010, https://areu.org.af/archives/publication/1018

4. For other analyses of the Taliban’s engagement with the 2014 presidential election, see Michael Semple, “The Taliban’s View

the 2014 Elections,” Peace Brief no. 165, United States Institute of Peace (USIP), January 2014, www.usip.org/publications/201

/talibans-view-2014-elections; and Antonio Giustozzi and Silab Mangal, “Violence, the Taliban, and Afghanistan’s 2014 Elections

Peaceworks no. 103, USIP, January 2015, www.usip.org/publications/2015/01/violence-taliban-and-afghanistans-2014-election

5. On the importance of elections as international legitimating signals, see, among others, Astri Surhke, When More Is Less:

The International Project in Afghanistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012); Jonathan Goodhand and Srinj

Bose, “Flooding the Lake? International Democracy Promotion and the Political Economy of the 2014 Presidential Election 

in Afghanistan,” Conflict, Security, and Development 16, no. 6 (2016); and Scott Smith, “Elections and Democratization i

Afghanistan,” in State Strengthening in Afghanistan: Lessons Learned, 2001–14, Peaceworks no. 116, USIP, May 2016, www.usi

org/publications/2016/05/state-strengthening-afghanistan.

6. For more on this point and the debates within the National Unity Government over election reforms, see Martine van Bijlert

“Electoral Reform, or Rather: Who Will Control Afghanistan’s Next Election?,” Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN), February 17, 

2015, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/electoral-reform-or-rather-who-will-control-afghanistans-next-election.

7. Unless otherwise specified, all figures in this report are derived from this data set, which is available in open source, along with th

code used to generate this report, at https://github.com/colincookman/afghanistan_presidential_election_2019 (for presidential election data) and https://github.com/colincookman/afghanistan_election_results_2018 (for parliamentary election data); further details on 

the sources used to generate the data are included in those repositories. For another open-source collection of elections data, see the 

Afghanistan Election Data project by the National Democratic Institute and Development Seed at https://afghanistanelectiondata.org

8. The three-year delay in holding the 2018 parliamentary elections, and the further six-month delay in certifying their results, mea

the next nationwide elections are now not expected to be held until at least 2024.

9. Erin Cunningham and Ernesto Londono, “Abdullah Mobilizes Supporters, Vows to Challenge Afghan Election Results,”

Washington Post, July 8, 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/abdullah-mobilizes-supporters-vows-to-challenge

-afghan-election-results/2014/07/08/3fd4bd0c-0690-11e4-8a6a-19355c7e870a_story.html.
USIP.ORG 49

10. See “Agreement between the Two Campaign Teams Regarding the Structure of the National Unity Government,” availa

https://cic.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/agreement_nat_unity_gov_aa_ag.pdf. 

11. Azam Ahmed, “Afghan Leader Said to Be Centralizing Power as Unity Government Plan Stalls,” New York Times, March 20, 20

www.nytimes.com/2015/03/21/world/asia/ghani-afghanistan-unity-government-plan.html. For further analysis of Ghani’s centralization efforts and the resulting conflicts with rival power centers in the country, see Andrew Watkins, “Afghanistan on the Edge?

Elections, Elites, and Ethnic Tensions,” War on the Rocks, October 31, 2019, https://warontherocks.com/2019/10/afghanista

-on-the-edge-elections-elites-and-ethnic-tensions.

12. Including the Taliban, who have worked to co-opt and vet some forms of government services and appointments in some areas

under their control. Scott Smith, “Service Delivery in Taliban-Influenced Areas of Afghanistan,” Special Report no. 465, USIP,

2020, www.usip.org/publications/2020/04/service-delivery-taliban-influenced-areas-afghanistan.

13. “The Future of the National Unity Government,” International Crisis Group, April 2017, www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-

/afghanistan/285-afghanistan-future-national-unity-government; Antonio Giustozzi and Ali Mohammad Ali, “The National Uni

Government and the Re-Shaping of Political Coalitions in Afghanistan,” Center for Research and Policy Analysis, January 2018

www.crpaweb.org/single-post/2018/01/10/The-National-Unity-Government-and-the-Re-Shaping-of-Political-Coalition

-Afghanistan-Antonio-Giustozzi-Ali-Mohammad-Ali

14. Samiullah Mahdi, “Ghani Says No Coalition if Re-elected,” Radio Free Afghanistan, September 25, 2019, https://gandhara.rfer

/a/ghani-says-no-coalition-if-re-elected/30183505.html. Ghani reiterated the point in a postelection interview: Matthhias Gebauer

“The Taliban Miscalculated Massively on All Fronts,” Spiegel International, October 7, 2019, www.spiegel.de/international/wor

/afghan-leader-women-in-afghanistan-will-never-be-caged-again-a-1290001.html.

15. For more on the background to this election law and the debates within the unity government and the Special Election Reform

Commission formed in 2015 to consider reform proposals, see Ali Yawar Adili and Martine van Bijlert, “Afghanistan’s Incomplete 

New Electoral Law: Changes and Controversies,” AAN, January 22, 2017, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/afghanistans-incomplete

-new-electoral-law-changes-and-controversies.

16. Hamid Shalizi and James Mackenzie, “Head of Afghan Election Body Sacked, Raising Doubts over 2018 Ballots,” Reuters

November 15, 2017, www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-election/head-of-afghan-election-body-sacked-raising-doubts-over

-2018-ballots-idUSKBN1DF2R3

17. Mujib Mashal, “Afghan Parliament’s Term Is Extended after Squabbles Delay Elections,” New York Times, June 19, 201

www.nytimes.com/2015/06/20/world/asia/afghan-parliaments-term-is-extended-after-squabbles-delay-elections.html. See also

https://github.com/colincookman/afghanistan_election_results_2018 for results data and analysis of those elections.

18. Ali Yawar Adili, “Afghanistan’s 2019 Elections (3): New Electoral Commissioners, Amendments to the Electoral Law,” AAN, March 5, 

2019, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/afghanistans-2019-elections-3-new-electoral-commissioners-amendments-to-the-electoral-law.

19. Office of the Chief of Staff to the President, “Decree of the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Numbers 414–416,”

https://ocs.gov.af/dr/decree_details/414.

20. “Afghanistan Presidential Election Postponed to September,” Reuters, March 20, 2019, www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanista

-election/afghanistan-presidential-election-postponed-to-september-idUSKCN1R11X

21. Former president Karzai also continued in office past the official expiration of his term during the 2014 election period. 

Gulabuddin Ghubar, “Supreme Court Extends President Ghani’s Tenure,” TOLO News, April 22, 2019, www.tolonew

/afghanistan/supreme-court-extends-president-ghani%E2%80%99s-tenure.

22. The Ghazni provincial election results were the subject of a major dispute following the 2010 parliamentary elections, with th

president Karzai forming a special court, then annuling its findings, and altering the initially reported outcome of the elections 

in the province to produce an ethnically balanced delegation. For more background, see Democracy International, “Election 

Observation Mission Afghanistan Parliamentary Elections 2010,” June 2011, https://democracyinternational.com

/media/DI%20Afghanistan%202010%20EOM%20Final%20Report_web.pdf; and Ali Yawar Adili, “The Afghanistan Election

Conundrum (9): The 2010 Ghazni Spectre Rears Its Head Again,” AAN, July 5, 2018, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/repo

/political-landscape/the-afghanistan-election-conundrum-9-the-2010-ghazni-spectre-rears-its-head-again.

23. RFE/RL, “Afghanistan Postpones Two Local Elections,” Radio Free Afghanistan, May 29, 2019, www.rferl.org/a/afghanista

-postpones-two-local-elections/29970772.html.

24. Mujib Mashal and Fahim Abed, “Taliban Peace Talks Cast Uncertainty on Presidential Vote,” New York Times, September 

2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/world/asia/afghanistan-election-taliban.html.

25. Ali Yawar Adili and Thomas Ruttig, “Afghanistan’s 2019 Election (7): Dithering over Peace amid a Lacklustre Campaign,” AAN,

September 16, 2019, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/afghanistans-2019-election-7-dithering-over-peace-amid-a-lacklustre-campaign
50 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

26. Mujib Mashal, David Zucchino, and Fatima Faizi, “In Trump’s Taliban Snub, a Shift of Fortune for Afghanistan’s President,” New Y

Times, September 17, 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/world/asia/afghanistan-election-taliban-talks.html; Craig Nelson, “Afghan

President Inherits Long-Sought Role after U.S. Ends Taliban Talks,” Wall Street Journal, September 10, 2019, www.wsj.com/ar

/afghan-president-inherits-long-sought-role-after-u-s-ends-taliban-talks-11568149013.

27. Abdul Qadir Sediqi and Orooj Hakimi, “Ghani Named Winner of Disputed Afghan Poll, Rival Also Claims Victory,” Reuters, February 18, 2020

www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-election/ghani-named-winner-of-disputed-afghan-poll-rival-also-claims-victory-idUSKBN20C1P

28. Mujib Mashal, Fatima Faizi, and Najim Rahim, “Ghani Takes the Oath of Afghan President. His Rival Does, Too,” New York Time

March 9, 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/world/asia/afghanistan-president-inauguration-ghani-abdullah-.html; Michael 

Pompeo, “Statement on Presidential Inaugurations in Afghanistan,”US Department of State, March 9, 2020, www.state

/statement-on-presidential-inaugurations-in-afghanistan/; Ali Yawari Adili, “From Parallel Governments to a New Form of PowerSharing? Afghanistan’s Ongoing Post-election Crisis,” AAN, May 7, 2020, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/repor

/political-landscape/from-parallel-governments-to-a-new-form-of-power-sharing-afghanistans-ongoing-post-election-crisis.

29. Michael Pompeo, “On the Political Impasse in Afghanistan,” S Department of State, March 23, 2020, www.state.

/on-the-political-impasse-in-afghanistan.

30. Abdul Qadir Sediqi and Hamid Shalizi, “Afghan President and Rival Strike Power-Sharing Deal after Months of Feuding,” Reuters, May 

2020, www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-politics/afghan-president-rival-close-in-on-power-sharing-deal-sources-idUSKBN22T0

31. Some members of Abdullah’s coalition of supporters have already begun to distance themselves from the new partnership

For an overview of the terms of the agreement and the text, see Ali Yawar Adili, “End of the Post-election Impasse? Ghani and

Abdullah’s New Power-Sharing Formula,” AAN, May 20, 2020, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/political-landscap

/end-of-the-post-election-impasse-ghani-and-abdullahs-new-power-sharing-formula.

32. The UN-managed 2004 presidential and 2005 parliamentary elections offered Afghans living in Iran and Pakistan some limit

absentee voting options, but absentee balloting options have not been provided in more recent elections. In the 2019 election, 

polling station staff and security personnel were allowed to cast votes at whichever stations they were assigned to work at.

33. As an example, polling center no. 0101050 in the 2018–19 elections was located at the Haji Ghulam Dastagir Mosque in Kabul

city and contained seven polling stations (five for men, two for women). In the 2014 election, that specific mosque location was 

identified as polling center number 0101066, which had five polling stations assigned to it (three for men, two for women). In that 

election, polling center no. 0101050 was instead located at the Tajwar Sultana Girls High School, with eight polling stations. (

school was the location of polling center number 0101062 in 2018–19, with sixteen polling stations.)

34. Lax registration requirements have been a recurrent concern of observers; most recently, the Free and Fair Election Foundation of 

Afghanistan (FEFA) noted concerns over repeat voting in its 2018 parliamentary election observation report, but did not attempt to 

quantify this. FEFA, “Report on Observation of 2018 Parliamentary Election,” February 2019, 42, www.fefa.org.af/Home/Details?ps=284.

35. “Notice by Commission for Military Affairs Regarding Non-participation of People in Fake Election Process,” Voice of Jihad, 

September 26, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20200527225623/https://alemarahenglish.com/?p=31060; Ahmad Sultan an

Abdul Qadir Sediqi, “Suicide Bomber and Gunmen Hit Eastern Afghanistan Gov’t Office,” Reuters, September 18, 2019

.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-election-education/afghanistans-taliban-tells-teachers-students-to-block-presidential-elections

-or-risk-death-idUSKBN1W315J. For a comprehensive study of Taliban violence in past election cycles, see Luke N. Condra et al

“The Logic of Insurgent Electoral Violence,” American Economic Review 108, no. 11 (2018): 3119–21

36. For the 2019 elections, Afghan security officials did not release details on pre-election polling center security assessments or 

personnel deployments. Luke N. Condra et al., “Damaging Democracy? Security Provision and Turnout in Afghan Elections,

Economics and Politics 31, no. 2 (2019) 163–93.

37. The UN methodology also includes Afghan National Police personnel performing civilian support duties during the election perio

although these forces often serve paramilitary functions in other contexts. “Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict Special Report:

2019 Election-Related Violence,” United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, October 2019, https://unama.unmissions.or

/sites/default/files/unama_special_report_-_2019_election-related_violence_0.pdf.

38. Th US military has gradually reduced or restricted any publicly available reporting on security incidents in Afghanistan, and as

has drawn its forces down over the past six years, the lack of widespread observation capabilities across the country likely skews 

whatever classified data may still be collected. Media-based event data are similarly reliant on reporting access and subject to 

editorial coverage decisions. Figures published by Afghan security ministries and the Taliban insurgency are generally aimed at

shaping public narratives of victory and are not reliable indicators. The lack of consistent collection practices by all actors also limits

the availability of time-series data or granular geolocation information that could be used in conjunction with more detailed election 

results data across electoral cycles. For the 2019 election, a report by a consortium of local observer groups indicated security 
USIP.ORG 51

threats at approximately one-fifth of all stations where observers were deployed, but the author found discrepancies in underlying polling station–level documentation used to produce this reporting, leaving actual observation coverage gaps unclear. Local 

Partnership for Legitimacy through Democracy, “Afghanistan 2019 Presidential Election Observation Report,” February 2020, 20.

39. Of these closed centers, fifty-five (3.8 percent) were either dropped from IEC planning prior to the actual 2014 elections or 

reported no results in that election, and are presumed to have never opened.

40. Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan (IEC), “Decision of the Independent Election Commission No. 01-1396,” April 8, 

2017, unpublished English language translation; available in Dari at www.iec.org.af/pdf/decisions-1396/dari/IEC%20LGL%20IE

%20Decision%2001-%201396%20on%20PCs%20Allocation%20Regulation,%20Procedure%20an....pdf. 

41. An unpublished IEC planning document obtained from an election observer, derived from an evaluation of polling centers carried out in January 2018, categorized centers as “new,” “old,” or “relocated,” but these codes do not appear to accurately reflect 

actual changes to site locations; not all “old” centers match between the sets based on coordinate and center name checks, 

and not all “new” centers are labeled as such. Additionally, approximately a quarter of all centers are uncategorized.

42. The key files documenting polling center relationships can be found at https://github.com/colincookman/afghanistan_presidenti

_election_2019/blob/master/pc_plan/pc_code_matching_2014_2018.csv and https://github.com/colincookman/afghanistan

_presidential_election_2019/blob/master/pc_plan/nearest_replacement_center_2014_2018.csv. Any corrections to the author’s 

matching efforts are welcome and encouraged, and can be sent through email, Twitter, or GitHu

43. For a countervailing view, see Thomas H. Johnson, “The 2019 Presidential Election: A Continuation of Problematic Processes an

Results,” Afghanistan Institute for Strategic Studies, https://aiss.af/assets/aiss_publication/Final_AISS_2019_election_Paper-English.

44. The centers dropped between 2014 and 2018 provided 914,587 out of 3,937,425 total valid votes for Ghani in the final 20

runoff election and 581,799 votes out of 3,185,465 total valid votes for Abdullah, respectively. 

45. Based on linear regression analysis of ag_pct_14 against dropped_from_14 and province_name_eng variables in consolidated 

2014–19 polling center results data set, for cases where a link has been established between the two sites. See https://github.co

/colincookman/afghanistan_presidential_election_2019/blob/master/analysis/pc_analysis.csv.

46. “Turnout” here is defined as the share of final valid votes cast as a percentage of total registered voters in each center and is

based on linear regression analysis of turnout_19 and turnout_18 variables against center_status and province_name_eng variables in consolidated 2014–19 polling center results data set, for cases where a link has been established between the two sites.

47. Based on linear regression analysis of aa_pct_14 and ag_pct_14 variables against center_status and coord_14_18_discrepancy

_in_meters variables in consolidated 2014–19 polling center results data set, incorporating nearest neighbor polling center 

substitutes for centers that were dropped after 2014.

48. Based on linear regression analysis of winner_votes_18 and ag_pct_19 variables against center_status and province_name_eng

variables in consolidated 2014–19 polling center results data set, for cases where a link has been established between the two sites. 

49. Beyond the 233 centers added back between 2018 and 2019 in Ghazni, another forty-nine centers in other provinces were

planned in 2019 that had not been previously planned for 2018, and fifteen centers that had been planned in 2018 were 

dropped from 2019 plans.

50. Based on linear regression analysis of planned_2019 variable against ag_pct_14 and province_name_eng variables in consolidated 2014–19 polling center results data set, for cases where a link has been established between the two sites, and substituting nearest available replacement centers for 2014 centers that were dropped after 2014. 

51. If dropped 2014 sites are linked to their nearest available replacement center in 2019, the impact is somewhat less dramatic, 

with completely dropped sites accounting for approximately 13.5 percent of the total 2014 second-round valid vote. Gauging

the exact impact of center replacements and the degree to which relocations substantially alter voter behavior will likely require 

further analysis of transportation times and other local-level accessibility considerations.

52. Without any attempts to associate 2014 sites to their nearest available replacement, in total, 2.39 million votes were recorded 

at sites either dropped from planning between 2014 and 2018 or dropped from the 2019 pre-election plans, of which Ghani

received 1.48 million and Abdullah approximately 913,000. Of the centers from 2014 that were still available in the IEC’s total 

universe of potential centers but that were dropped from 2018–19 plans, Ghani received 14.3 percent of his final valid vote from

these centers and Abdullah received 10.4 percent.

53. According to IEC Decision 119 of December 22, 2019. Details reported by the IEC omitted ten polling stations (in Nangarhar, 

0604106-04, 0608218-05, 0616365-06, 0616369-03, and 0621431-06; in Ghazni, 1113279-07; in Kandahar, 2711172-10, 2711172

11, and 2711172-12; and in Herat, 3210307-05) from both published results and the list of stations officially reported to have 

been closed or had their votes invalidated, producing a discrepancy between the official count (26,580 stations open) and the 

polling station–level data set (26,570 confirmed open) that this report is based on. Another 139 of all open polling centers were 
52 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

reported to have been open but subsequently had the results of all their polling stations invalidated in the postelection audit 

process. With all the votes invalidated, it is ambiguous as to whether these stations were ever in fact open to real voters.

54. Reporterly, “431 Polling Centers to Be closed on Election Day: MoI,” August 28, 2019, http://reporterly.net/live/newsfeed

/wednesday-august-28/431-polling-centers-to-be-closed-on-election-day-moi.

55. Ministry of Interior (MOI) officials also appear to have further adjusted their closure plans on and immediately before election 

day, but again did not provide any detailed reporting on the specific centers involved. See Twitter statements by Abdul Moqi

Abdulrahimzai, then the MOI director general of operations and plans: https://twitter.com/AbMoqim/status/1177911548779646976; 

https://twitter.com/AbMoqim/status/1177930120927027201.

56. This may overstate the number of 2018 closures, as the IEC generally omitted polling centers or stations where all results were invalidated from its reporting; thus some centers that reported no results may have been open but had their results subsequently invalidate

57. According to election observer sources, voter verification devices did have an override function that would allow a bypass of 

the voter list requirement, which was intended to allow polling station workers to record votes for administrative and security 

staff not registered at their place of deployment. Verification devices were able to track the use of this function to flag potential 

cases of abuse, but the IEC did not release any detailed information on the degree to which the override function was activated, 

and most observer accounts indicate that voters not found to be present on polling station lists were denied a ballot.

58. Many of these were smaller centers with only a few polling stations each; roughly a third of all stations were closed as a result.

59. While most Afghan provinces showed particular political leanings in favor of one candidate or another, there is too much 

variation at the polling center level to attempt to project provincial-level preferences onto centers in districts in which no other 

centers opened for potential comparison. It bears reiterating that the assumption of generally uniform political preferences at 

the district level holds only in some cases, and not consistently across the country.

60. For 2019, the IEC assigned a maximum of 400 registered voters per polling station booth within a center, which ranged from as few 

as one officially registered voter to more than 10,000 voters at some of the largest centers in Logar, Kandahar, and Helmand.

61. The issuance of new electronic tazkera IDs was itself a major point of dispute within the National Unity Government in the runup to the parliamentary elections, with different factions opposing or supporting the inclusion of ethnicity and nationality fields

part of the ID. See Ali Yawar Adili and Jelena Bjelica, “The E-Tazkera Rift: Yet Another Political Crisis Looming?,” AAN, Februa

22, 2018, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/political-landscape/the-e-tazkera-rift-yet-another-political-crisis-looming.

62. By some accounts, as many as 23 million such cards were in circulation at the time of the 2014 elections. Scott Worden,

“Afghanistan Election Conundrum (13): New Voter Registry Too Good to Be True,” AAN, August 28, 2018, www.afghanis

-analysts.org/en/reports/political-landscape/afghanistan-election-conundrum-12-new-voter-registry-too-good-to-be-true.

63. Prior to the publication of the 2018 registration figures, the IEC gave a preliminary registration count of 9.4 million voters, which 

were subsequently de-duplicated and cleaned to reflect missing registration details. For more scrutiny of the 2018 registration 

process, also see Worden, “Afghanistan Election Conundrum (13).”

64. Registration changes during this period could be made by voters only at a limited number of “top-up” polling centers, which 

were generally distributed one per district or urban subdivision.

65. IEC, “IEC Press Release on the Closure of Voter Registration Top Up,” July 1, 2019, www.iec.org.af/en/media-gallery/press-releas

/581-press-end-of-vr-20190701.

66. These reports omitted fifteen polling centers with previously known voter registration data and added registration data for fiv

polling centers that had no previously recorded registration data or votes in 2018.

67. Total voter registration for Ghazni was 235,213 registered vote

68. Azizullah Hamdard, “Over 400,000 Names Struck Off Voter List to Ensure Transparency,” Pajhwok Afghan News, October 22

2019, http://elections.pajhwok.com/en/2019/10/22/ver-400000-names-struck-voter-list-ensure-transparency.

69. Based on linear regression analysis of vr_final_total_19 variable against total_valid_votes_14 and province_name_eng variables in consolidated 2014–19 polling center results data set, for cases where a link has been established between the two sites. 

See https://github.com/colincookman/afghanistan_presidential_election_2019/blob/master/analysis/pc_analysis.csv

70. Based on linear regression analysis of vr_net_change variable against ag_final_pct_14, total_valid_votes_14, turnout_18, and 

province_name_eng variables in consolidated 2014–19 polling center results data set, for cases where a link has been established between the two sites. See https://github.com/colincookman/afghanistan_presidential_election_2019/blob/maste

/analysis/pc_analysis.csv.

71. The regulations call for a maximum distance of three kilometers between voter residences and polling centers in urban area

and five kilometers in rural areas, and a minimum distance of one kilometer between centers in urban areas; these categories 

are not otherwise defined in the document. See IEC Decision 1-1396
USIP.ORG 53

72. Andrew Pinney, “An Afghan Population Estimate,” AAN, 2012, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads

/2012/09/22_Pinney_An_Afghan_Population_Estimation.pdf. For CSO/ANSIA population estimates, see https://nsia.gov.af (or i

digitized format at https://github.com/colincookman/afghanistan_district_population_data).

73. In theory, Afghan electoral law calls for the apportionment of parliamentary seats on the basis of provincial population, but in 

practice seats were not adjusted by the IEC for either the 2010 or 2018 parliamentary elections from the original allocations set 

during the 2004–05 period when the constitution was enacted and the first formal elections were held.

74. WorldPop/Flowminder, “Final Population Mapping for Afghanistan, 2017,” unpublished draft report, June 2017.

75. “Spatial Distribution of Population in 2019—Afghanistan,” WorldPop, www.worldpop.org/geodata/summary?id=6075

76. See also a previous analysis of parliamentary registration by Scott Worden, “Past as Prologue? What the Parliamentary Electi

Results Tell Us about the September Presidential Election,” AAN, August 23, 2019, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/repo

/political-landscape/past-as-prologue-what-the-parliamentary-election-results-tell-us-about-the-september-presidential-election.

77. At the extremes, Pusht Rod district in Farah province planned only 0.04 polling stations per thousand voting-age people, while 

Mearzaka in Paktia planned thirteen stations per thousand.

78. For more, see Robert Garrett, Austin Nar, Thomas J. Fisher, and Karsten Maurer, “ggvoronoi: Voronoi Diagrams and Heatmap

with ggplot2,” Journal of Open Source Software 3, no. 32 (December 2018).

79. Based on linear regression analysis of vor_pct_catch_elig variable against ag_final_pct_14 and province_name_eng variables 

in consolidated 2014–19 polling center results data set, for cases where a link has been established between the two sites. See

https://github.com/colincookman/afghanistan_presidential_election_2019/blob/master/analysis/pc_analysis.csv.

80. The number of officially recognized districts is not consistent across Afghan government and donor organizations, and varies acros

time periods and data sets; as of 2018–19 the IEC follows a list of 421 districts, not counting Shahrak-e-Hayratan in Balkh province, which

is classified as a district by the Afghan Geodesy and Cartography Head Office and Arazi Land Authority (for 422 districts in total) but not

by the CSO/ANSIA. Data sets of 399 districts or 407 districts are also commonly used, which do not incorporate subsequent “temporary

administrative splits to districts. See the MapSync Afghanistan District Maps project for further discussion and an effort to establish 

comprehensive timeline: https://mapsynch.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=fe0f16a7b8da4157a7d7f9451a802d74

81. Catchment areas around centers that registered voters but were closed on election day are further estimated to include the 

equivalent of about 2.5 million people, or around 1.25 million eligible voters (8.48 percent of total); as noted earlier, in practice 

these day-of closures affected the equivalent of 9.3 percent of actual voter registration.

82. For further explanation, see https://github.com/colincookman/afghanistan_election_results_2018#kabul-final-results-discrepancies.

83. “Ex-Chairmen and Commissioners of Afghan Election Commissions Given Jail Sentences,” Khaama Press, September 3, 201

www.khaama.com/ex-chairmen-and-commissioners-of-afghan-election-commissions-given-jail-sentences-03949.

84. While they have the potential to impact counts at the margins, particularly in a national-level election, individual-level and even 

station-level vote fraud represents an inefficient strategy for altering an electoral outcome. Despite widespread popularization of the idea that deliberate repeat voting represents a major risk for electoral fraud, in the S electoral context, one stud

estimates fewer than 1 in 4,000 (0.025 percent) cases of double voting, and even this low incidence may be explained by 

measurement errors. Sharad Goel et al., “One Person, One Vote: Estimating the Prevalence of Double Voting in U.S. President

Elections,” American Political Science Review, 2020, https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/morse/files/1p1v.pdf.

85. Staffan Darnolff and Scott S. Smith, “Breaking, Not Bending: Afghan Elections Require Institutional Reform,” Special Report no.

USIP, August 2019, 11–12, www.usip.org/publications/2019/08/breaking-not-bending-afghan-elections-require-institutional-refor

86. Haseeba Atakpal, “US Ambassador Wells on Afghan Elections, Peace, Corruption,” TOLO News, October 16, 2019, https://tolone

.com/afghanistan/us-ambassador-wells-afghan-elections-peace-corruption; “Presidential Candidates Council: No Non-Biometric 

Votes,” TOLO News, October 7, 2019, https://tolonews.com/afghanistan/presidential-candidates-council-no-non-biometric-votes.

87. The complete five-part biometric data set generated for each verified voter included left and right thumbprints, a photograph of th

voter’s face, a photograph of the voter’s tazkera ID card, and a photograph of the voter’s previously obtained voter registration sticker.

88. For more procedural background, see “Elections in Afghanistan: 2019 Presidential Election, Frequently Asked Questions,” 

International Foundation for Electoral Systems, September 2019, www.ifes.org/sites/default/files/ifes_faqs_elections_

_afghanistan_2019_presidential_election_september_2019.pdf. Concerns were reportedly raised by international donors over 

the potential compromise of the secrecy of the vote if the verification signature stickers on ballots were linked back to individual 

voters through biometric records, but these concerns appear to have been overruled on the basis of assurances that this would 

not be possible. Some complaints did in fact allege the mass printing of stickers to facilitate ballot stuffing

89. In cases where cellular connectivity could not be established on election day—a widespread problem in many cases due to 

Taliban threats against service providers—biometric voter verification transmission was made only after the return of the device
54 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

to a provincial IEC headquarters or on arrival at the National Tally Center in Kabul. This transmission—accomplished by removin

the memory cards from the devices and uploading the data through Dermalog or IEC staff computers—appears to have produced discrepancies in the number of votes processed by a device and the total number of biometric voter records at a station.

90. Although the information was collected on tally sheets, the IEC did not release detailed information on the number of ballots 

that were unused, found to be spoiled (marks made for more than one candidate, for example), or invalidated at the polling 

station as part of the day-of tallying process. Accounting for these ballots may explain changes between initial day-of vote estimates and later provisional totals, prior to the implementation of biometric records scrutiny. In an unpublished report to election 

stakeholders dated February 20, 2020, the IEC reported 25,915 spoiled ballots, 482,848 ballots invalidated as a result of biometric requirements or other forms of scrutiny in the first and second audit, and 5.68 million distributed but unused ballots.

91. The IEC did not provide detailed reporting on any of the changes made as a result of the biometric de-duplication effort but th

AAN reports a provincial breakdown of these changes. See Ali Yawar Adili, “Afghanistan’s 2019 Election (24): Disputed Recount,

Threats Not to Accept Results, and Some Interesting New Data,” AAN, November 21, 2019, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/

/reports/political-landscape/afghanistans-2019-election-24-disputed-recount-threats-not-to-accept-results-and-some-interesting

-new-data/; and Jelena Bjelica and Ali Yawar Adili, “Afghanistan’s 2019 Election (23): Disputed Biometric Votes 

Endanger Election Results,” AAN, November 7, 2019, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/political-landscape/

afghanistans-2019-election-23-disputed-biometric-votes-endanger-election-results.

92. The Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) did not release a complete list of all polling stations it ordered scrutinized in response t

these complaints, which in many cases are reported to have overlapped with other IEC criteria, but reported that it had ordered recounts 

at 2,296 polling stations on the basis of election-day complaints. Of the polling stations identified by the IEC as undergoing audit, 393 (4.8 

percent of all unique stations reported to have been audited, or 17.1 percent of all those ordered for scrutiny by the ECC) were reported 

to have been selected on the basis of ECC orders alone and not other criteria. See also ECC, “Bulletin Number 22: Status of Election Da

Complaints and Appeals Adjudication”, December 24, 2019, https://iecc.gov.af/sites/default/files/2019-12/Bulliten%20%2322.pdf.

93. IEC, “Decision No. 104-1398,” November 4, 2019, www.iec.org.af/pdf/decisions-1398/en/1398-104.pdf.

94. IEC, “Decision No. 105-1398,” November 4, 2019, www.iec.org.af/pdf/decisions-1398/en/1398-105.pdf.

95. IEC, “Decision No. 109-1398,” November 15, 2019, www.iec.org.af/pdf/decisions-1398/en/1398-109.pdf; IEC, “Decision No. 112-

1398,” November 21, 2019, www.iec.org.af/pdf/decisions-1398/dari/1398-112.pdf. Although Decision 112 mentioned orders for 

twenty-three stations in total, it specified only twenty-two in detail.

96. An unpublished UN Election Support Program report, dated November 12, 2019, reports that of the total 86,225 biometri

records removed, 47,527 were removed because of apparent facial matches (55.1 percent of all duplicate record flags), 37,006 

because of apparent duplicate voter ID cards (42.9 percent), and 5,882 because of apparent duplicate fingerprints (6.8 percent).

97. IEC, “Decision No. 108-1398,” November 14, 2019, www.iec.org.af/pdf/decisions-1398/en/1398-108.pdf.

98. The Abdullah team also objected to the IEC’s five-vote threshold for discrepancies between biometric and nonbiometric vot

totals. Unofficial translation of Stability and Partnership Election Campaign Central Office Monitoring and Fraud Preventio

Directorate letter to the Independent Election Commission, December 10, 2019; see also contemporaneous press coverage, 

Siyar Sirat, “Abdullah Blasts IEC for ‘Ignoring’ Candidates’ Demands,” TOLO News, November 17, 2019, https://tolonews.c

/index.php/afghanistan/abdullah-blasts-iec-%E2%80%98ignoring%E2%80%99-candidates%E2%80%99-demands.

99. The average polling stations reported approximately seventy-three votes, and the median around sixty-four, so the invalidatio

of approximately 275 polling stations, or around 1 percent of all open stations, could potentially have had such an impact.

100. Audit activities were blocked in Badakhshan, Baghlan, Faryab, Jawzjan, Panjshir, Samangan, and Takhar provinces. For more o

the standoff, see Mujib Mashal, “Afghan Vote Crawls toward Crisis, with No Results after 2 Months,” New York Times, November 

22, 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/world/asia/afghanistan-election-ghani-abdullah.html; and Ali Yawar Adili, “Afghanistan’s 

2019 Elections (26): A Q&A about the Ongoing Election Stalemate,” AAN, December 8, 2019, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/e

/reports/political-landscape/afghanistans-2019-elections-26-a-qa-about-the-ongoing-election-stalemate.

101. The IEC justified its decisions in an open response letter to the Abdullah campaign: “IEC HQ Detailed Response on the letter o

Stability and Convergence Electoral Ticket/Office,” December 15, 2019, www.iec.org.af/pdf/Letter-en.pd

102. IEC, “Decision No. 119-1398” [in Dari], December 22, 2019, www.iec.org.af/pdf/decisions-1398/dari/1398-119.pdf.

103. For the full list of invalidations and closures reported, see www.iec.org.af/results/en/invalid/invalid_by_pc.

104. The IEC released scanned images of the polling station tally forms for 2,020 invalidated stations, or 87.9 percent of all station

reported to have been invalidated. The author manually transcribed results from these forms; only 759 stations appeared to report

non-zero vote counts, for 102,018 votes in total. Scan legibility issues in at least 17 cases were the most likely cause of discrepancies between this account and the aggregate figure provided by the IEC, which reported 760 stations with non-zero votes
USIP.ORG 55

105. Based on linear regression analysis of pct_invalidated_14 variable against pc_invalidated and province_name_eng variables 

in consolidated 2014–19 polling center results data set, for cases where a link has been established between the two sites. See

https://github.com/colincookman/afghanistan_presidential_election_2019/blob/master/analysis/pc_analysis.csv.

106. Of the 298 stations validated under this criterion (10.5 percent of all such stations audited), only 254 reported non-zero vote totals.

107. Pre-audit biometric votes and changes as a result of the de-duplication process are available only at the provincial level. UN

Election Support Program briefing of November 11, 2019; Adili, “Afghanistan’s 2019 Election (24).

108. Electoral Complaints Commission, “Bulletin Number 24: Complaints against Preliminary Results,” January 20, 2020, https://iecc

.gov.af/sites/default/files/2020-01/Bulletin%20No.%2024.pdf. See also Gulabuddin Ghubar, “Commission Must Answer Ov

16,500 Election Complaints,” TOLO News, December 26, 2019, https://tolonews.com/elections-2019/commission-must-answer

-over-16500-election-complaints; and “IECC Rejects 9,866 Registered Electoral Complaints,” Reporterly, January 14, 2020,

http://reporterly.net/live/newsfeed/tuesday-january-14-2020/iecc-rejects-9866-registered-electoral-complaints.

109. Electoral Complaints Commission, “Bulletin Number 25: Appeals Related to Preliminary Results,” January 28, 2020,

https://iecc.gov.af/sites/default/files/2020-02/Bulletin-No.-25.pdf.

110. For a retrospective summary, see Electoral Complaints Commission, “Bulletin Number 26: 2019 Presidential Elections Overview,” 

February 27, 2020, https://iecc.gov.af/sites/default/files/2020-03/Bulletin%20No.%2026_English.pdf.

111. Khalid Nikzad, “Poll Results Will Be Announced within Next Two Days: IEC,” TOLO News, February 16, 2020, https://tolonews.co

/elections-2019/poll-results-will-be-announced-within-next-two-days-iec; Mujib Mashal, Najim Rahim, and Fatima Faizi, “Ghani

Named Afghan Election Winner. His Opponent Claims Victory, Too,” New York Times, February 18, 2020, www.nytimes.co

/2020/02/18/world/asia/afghanistan-election-ashraf-ghani.html.

112. The published list of the special audit sample targets lists 311 polling stations, meaning two extra were identified due to fraction

resulting from the provincial sampling distribution.

113. Thirty-seven of the polling stations ordered for a second recount by the ECC were included in the preliminary results but reported zero votes. Seven of the polling stations ordered for a second recount by the ECC were not included in the prelimina

results data and were also missing on the list of invalidated polling stations. They were ultimately included in the final results,

but with zero votes reported.

114. Another four polling stations were added to the final results that were not previously included in the preliminary results; however, all reported zero votes in the final results. All four stations were among those included in the “missing biometric data” 

category of polling stations ordered for recount by the ECC and were unaccounted for in the IEC’s previous reporting on polling 

station results invalidation or closure status following its announcement of preliminary results in December.

115. The twenty-three reportedly invalidated stations were: 0104420-04 and 0115544-06 in Kabul; 0608218-05, 0616365-06

0604106-04, and 0621431-06 in Nangarhar; 0913265-09, 0904097-08, 0913265-08, 0904097-04, and 0913265-02 in Baghlan; 

1110176-05 and 1113279-07 in Ghazni; 2701018-13, 2701039-25, 2704077-01, 2711169-03, and 2713189-02 in Kandahar; 2908169

12, 2908169-17, 2907131-02, and 2907135-01 in Faryab; and 3001024-15 in Helmand.

116. There is some ambiguity in the available English-language translations of the ECC orders. Some observer sources suggest

that the full polling station votes could have potentially been invalidated had these triggers occurred. See Electoral Complaints

Commission, “Bulletin Number 25.”

117. The ECC does not release details on complaints filed, so it cannot be confirmed whether these issues were raised by candidates or not, but public communications by the Abdullah campaign before or after the announcement of results does no

appear to have identified this as a concern, focusing instead on the three main categories of complaints and “300,000 votes.”

118. In the 2014 elections, the IEC uniformly distributed 600 ballots per polling station, which was used as a benchmark for turnout.

119. For more on the role of provincial councils, see Thomas Ruttig, “The Butter on the Bread: The Provincial Councils’ Fight for Extend

Authority,” AAN, March 23, 2014, www.afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/political-landscape/the-butter-on-the-bread-the-provincial

-councils-fight-for-extended-authority/; and Anna Larson and Noah Coburn, “Why Afghanistan’s Provincial Council Elections Matter,” 

Peace Brief no. 170, USIP, March 2014, www.usip.org/publications/2014/03/why-afghanistans-provincial-council-elections-matte

120. Michael Semple, “The Rise of the Hazaras and the Challenge of Pluralism in Afghanistan 1978–2011,” Carr Center for Huma

Rights Policy, 2011, https://cmes.fas.harvard.edu/files/cmes/files/semplepolicysummary.pdf.

121. For FAO land mapping, see www.fao.org/geospatial/resources/detail/en/c/1024570/, or see initial analysis by the Special

Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction in Appendix F of the January 2020 quarterly report to theUS Congress, whi

relies on satellite-based Landscan population estimates (www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2020-01-30qr.pdf).

122. For such a distance index for the known universe of 2018–19 polling centers, see https://github.com/colincookman/afghanistan

_election_results_2018#geospatial-data.
56 PEACEWORKS | NO. 16

123. This simplified method also introduces classification errors, in that Afghanistan’s thirty-four provincial capital districts still vary t

a considerable degree, with some areas tightly bounded around urban centers and others incorporating substantial surrounding 

rural or peri-urban tracts within the capital district area.

124. Out of a total estimated population of 30.48 million as of solar year 1398 (2019–20), the CSO estimates 9.68 million residents in

all thirty-four provincial capitals and 4.27 million in Kabul city district. The WorldPop project estimates 8.66 million residents in all

capitals and 3.85 million in Kabul.

125. Mujib Mashal, “Afghan Vice President Flies to Turkey amid Torture and Rape Allegations,” New York Times, May 19, 2017, www.nytim

.com/2017/05/19/world/middleeast/abdul-rashid-dostum-afghanistan-turkey.html; Karim Amini, “New Alliance Lists Demands; Calls for 

Systematic Reforms,” TOLO News, June 30, 2017, https://tolonews.com/afghanistan/new-alliance-lists-demands-calls-systematic-reforms

126. Pamela Constable, “Key Abdullah Ally Warns of Afghan Unrest If Vote Recount Is ‘One-Sided,’” Washington Post, August 14

2014, www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/key-abdullah-ally-warns-of-afghan-unrest-if-vote-recount-is-one-sided

/2014/08/13/5db8e2b2-230a-11e4-8b10-7db129976abb_story.html. In his memoir covering the period, Secretary Kerry does not

identify Noor by name but notes concerns within the State Department over threats to “form a parallel government” and the

need to avoid secession, civil war, or a coup (John Kerry, Every Day Is Extra [New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018], 419–20

127. Sharif Hassan, “Ousted but Not Out: Afghan Strongman Still Calls the Shots, Residents Say,” Washington Post, May 13, 

www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/ousted-but-not-out-afghan-strongman-still-calls-the-shots-residents-say/2018/05/11

/e384e598-52f0-11e8-a6d4-ca1d035642ce_story.html.

128. Abdulah Matin Sahak, “Gunfight Erupts in North Afghan City over Police Chief’s Appointment,” Reuters, March 14, 2019, ww

reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-politics/gunfight-erupts-in-north-afghan-city-over-police-chiefs-appointment-idUSKCN1QV1R

“Will Use All Options If Recent Agreement Regarding Issue Balkh Is Violated: Noor,” Khaama Press, March 20, 2019, www.khaam

.com/will-use-all-options-if-recent-agreement-regarding-issue-balkh-is-violated-noor-03531.

129. “Elections Won’t Go to Second Round, Claims Ata Mohammad Noor,” Khaama Press, September 29, 2019, www.khaama.

/elections-wont-go-to-second-round-claims-ata-mohammad-noor-04151.

130. The IEC did not formally accept Atmar’s withdrawal, and reported vote counts for him. In a decision on November 6, 2019, the IEC sai

that it would invalidate votes cast for withdrawn candidates Shaida Muhammad Abdali, Nur ul-Haq Ulumi, Haji Muhmmad Ibrahim Alekozai

and Zalmai Rassul, and would not use those votes as part of the basis for calculating total votes and the 50 percent majority threshold. 

Atmar would later be appointed foreign minister by Ghani in early April 2020. IEC, “Decision No. 103-1398,” October 20, 2019, www.ie

.org.af/pdf/decisions-1398/en/1398-103.pdf; “Atmar’s Votes Will Be Counted, Says IEC Commissioner,” Pajhwok Afghan News, November

6, 2019, https://factcheck.pajhwok.com/en/2019/11/06/atmars-votes-will-be-counted-says-iec-commissioner; “Haneef Atmar Appointed as 

Acting Foreign Minister,” TOLO News, April 4, 2020, https://tolonews.com/afghanistan/haneef-atmar-appointed-acting-foreign-minister.

131. In the 2009 election between Karzai and Abdullah, second-tier candidates managed to secure 20.8 percent of the final vote, and in the 

2004 election, in which Karzai and Yunus Qanooni were the top two vote getters, other candidates received 28.4 percent of the final vote.

132. For more on the impacts of SNTV, see, among other sources, Anna Larson, “Political Parties in Afghanistan,” Special Report no. 362, U

March 2015, www.usip.org/publications/2015/03/political-parties-afghanistan; Andrew Reynold and John Carey, “Fixing Afghanistan’s 

Electoral System: Arguments and Options for Reform,” Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, July 2012, https://areu.org.af/archiv

/publication/1211; and Thomas Ruttig, “Outside, Inside: Afghanistan’s Paradoxical Political Party System (2001–2016),” AAN, May 2018, ww

afghanistan-analysts.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/20180506-KAS-AAN-TR-Afghanistans-paradoxial-pol-party-system.pd

133. For more on the origins of SNTV, see, among other sources, Ruttig, “Outside, Inside,” 23–26; and Suhrke, When More Is Less, 178–

134. For more analysis of the makeup of the current parliamentary body, see Farid Tookhy, “Legislature and Legislative Elections in

Afghanistan: An Analysis,” Special Report no. 470, USIP, July 2020, www.usip.org/publications/2020/07/legislature-

-legislative-elections-afghanistan-analysis.

135. The IEC released an incomplete set of scanned polling station results forms for the 2018 parliamentary elections, which includ

indicator fields for whether the station is designated for male, female, or members of the Kuchi or Hindu/Sikh electorates. No

comprehensive digitized list of polling station type was released, and the author has yet to complete efforts to process these 

images for a partial index of stations by gender assignment.

136. Sixty-two percent of Jawzjan’s total voter registration is located in the provincial capital district, and more than 78 percent of al

final valid votes in the province were reported from Sheberghan

137. Abdul Qadir Sediqi and Storay Karimi, “Afghan Women Fear Mandatory Poll Photos Could Stop Them from Voting,” Reute

September 25, 2019, www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-election-women/afghan-women-fear-mandatory-poll-photos-coul

-stop-them-from-voting-idUSKBN1WA2

138. William Byrd, “Dismembering Afghanistan’s Ministry of Finance,” USIP, March 31, 2020, www.usip.org/publications/2020/

/dismembering-afghanistans-ministry-finance.
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Making Peace Possible

NO. 166 | August 2020

Drawing on a unique set of results data from Afghanistan’s 2019 presidential election and 

past elections, this report analyzes where and how prospective Afghan voters were able to 

participate in the 2019 polls, the decision making behind and adjudication of disputes over 

which votes would be counted as valid, how the available results compare with political 

trends evident in prior elections. The report also discusses the many factors—including

worsening security, polling center closures, tighter voter registration requirements, and 

modest campaign mobilization efforts, that combined to produce an outcome that suggests 

Afghan public participation in the 2019 presidential election fell to the lowest levels 

observed since the beginning of the current constitutional structure fifteen years ago.

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(Peaceworks, August 2020)

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Rosand (Special Report, August 2020

• Disengagement and Reconciliation in Conflict-Affected Settings by Leanne 

Erdberg Steadman (Special Report, August 202

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