Afghan election vote audit suspended following disagreements

According to reports, the audit of presidential votes have been halted due to misunderstandings between the electoral teams of Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai.

The audit process was suspended on Saturday evening and the process has still not started.

Preliminary reports suggest the audit was suspended after Abdullah’s team urged to disqualify ballot boxes which have over 600 votes.

However, Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai’s team opposed to the request by Dr. Abdullah’s team. There are also reports that Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai’s observers have abandoned the place where vote audit was conducted, and efforts have been put in place to resume the audit process.

In the meantime, Noor Mohammad Noor, spokesman for the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan (IEC), told reporters that the audit process has been halted temporarily due to technical issues in audit process. Noor further added that the observers of the two teams had disagreements regarding the ballot papers which were signed by the voters.