Leaked documents seen by TOLOnews show that the provincial offices of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) in Logar and Herat provinces have included fake votes among the credible ballots during the vote counting process.

Based on some other documents, IEC staffers were also involved in stealing votes to increase the ballot numbers of their desired candidates.

But the IEC has said the election management body will take action against these claims.

Based on a letter, the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission (IECC) should have invalidated the votes of at least six polling stations in Logar province and taken off these votes from the preliminary results. But the IEC site office in Logar has counted these votes as part of the preliminary results and included them in its database.

“Up until 2:00pm, the name of the real winners of the elections were quite clear, but after 4:00 or 5:00pm, votes were changed with the help of dollars, and those who did not have 500 votes in Logar came out on the top of the list, and those who won the elections, their names were then put in the fourth and fifth positions,” said Toryalai Abkari, an election observer in Logar.

The document also shows that in Anar Darah district of Farah province, several ballot boxes were brought to police headquarters under the pretext of security threats, but the commission has negated these complaints.

“Assessment, recounting and quarantine does not mean anything; in some cases, we have evidence that unfortunately the recounting process was accompanied by forgery and fraud... ,” said Yousuf Rashid, chief of Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA). 

“The commission is undertaking its work during the announcement of the preliminary results, when we announced the preliminary results, the electoral complaints commission will investigate all those ballot boxes against which there are complaints,” said Sayed Hafiz Hashemi, IEC spokesman.

Previously, documents were also leaked regarding the selling of parliament’s seats and the counting of fake votes by the IEC.