Kabul: Afghanistan has released full preliminary results from last month`s parliamentary election, throwing out more than 20 percent of ballots because of fraud.
Election commission chairman Fazel Ahmad Manawi says about 1.3 million votes were disqualified out of 5.6 million. That means about 23 percent of ballots were discarded because of ballot-box stuffing or re-jiggered totals.
Election officials called the vote a success because they were able to catch the fraud, but the number of fraudulent ballots also indicates that cheating was pervasive in a vote that many hoped would show the government`s commitment to reform.
It was not immediately clear what the results released Wednesday would mean for the makeup of the 249-member parliament.
Bureau Report
