The Independent Election Commission (IEC) has overturned an earlier decision and said it will count the votes where voters’ details were not entered into the biometric system.  
 
The IEC said that the voting process continued on the basis of the voters list at polling stations where biometric devices did not work,  and that there was no reason to disqualify these votes.

But election watchdogs have expressed doubt over the IEC’s capacity to separate fraudulent votes from valid votes.

Previously the IEC pledged to not include votes of people whose details had not been included in the biometric system.  

The IEC also said that telecommunication companies did not show a willingness to connect the biometric devices to internet services on the days of elections therefore the devices were used offline.

Almost 22,000 biometric devices were purchased by government from a German company. The arrival of the devices faced a delay in some provinces and election employees had problems in using the new system on election day.

Thousands of complaints about election violations were recorded during the elections.

Logar is one of the provinces where people have meanwhile complained about election violations.

“There were election centers which were not opened in the day of elections, but ballot boxes were stuffed there,” said a resident of Logar Abdul Habib Momand.

Residents in Logar have also accused the IEC of supporting certain candidates in the elections

“Our expectation is that an investigation should be launched in areas where boxes were filled to find out whether votes were cast through biometric system or not,” said another resident Hazrat Wali.

“We demand the electoral complaints commission investigates all fraud cases,” said a member of Logar provincial council Mohammad Naser Ghairat.

The IEC states that biometric devices were used properly at almost 80 percent of polling stations on election day.

This comes a week after a number of political parties criticized the Independent Election Commission (IEC) for what they called poor management and said the elections had been riddled with fraud.

The parties’ representatives said at a press conference in Kabul the IEC had systematically deprived a number of people from voting in different parts of the country.

The parties asked the election commission to discard votes from polling centers where biometric devices were not used.

On Saturday October 20, hundreds of polling centers failed to open and many others opened late. There were also technical problems with the biometric devices. Because so many centers failed to open, the IEC extended elections by one day and opened over 200 of the 401 centers that had been closed on the Saturday. Even then, many of these centers opened late. 
 
Voters however were furious about this and also criticized the election commission. They in turn accused them of poor management and claimed there had been numerous irregularities.

The parties said they will announce their final stance about the elections once their observers finish their jobs in monitoring the process.