Afghan Election Results

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8240534.stm

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/09/06/afghanistan.election/index.html

The election results from Afghanistan continue to come in.

Depending on totals and how fraud allegations are dealt with it is possible current PoA (President of Afghanistan) Hamid Karzai will have to face a runoff election.

If he doesn't and get handed the election that makes his next term one of questionable legitimacy-which may cause problems for him both at home and internationally. And that would be in addition to problems relating to corruption and poor use of government resources that have already occurred potentially continuing in his administration.

If he does he may loose to his chief rival candidate in a runoff. Which may solve problems if this rival does a better job fighting corruption, improving government providing of services, and so on. But, depending on who you listen to, may lead to greater problems with the Taliban as they may take advantage of Pashtun (President Karzai's tribal/ethnic group) displeasure at loosing the presidency (one of the worst possible scenarios is a Pashtun or even an Afghan civil war).

If he runs again in a runoff and wins then may help solves questions of it President Karzai is legitimate, but leave the other questions yet unanswered with regards to the first possibility.

This situation may effect not just Afghanistan's future (and I think a legacy of democracy may come to be a good thing for the nation if handled properly-tribal votes not foreshadowing tribal bloodletting or a return to the situation in the 1980s/90s). It will also affect NATO, the policies of the nation state members thereof, and neighboring nations in the region. And not just by (but not excluding) the current fighting going on there.

Thoughts on the situation?

 

I honestly think questions of legitimacy will arise no matter what happens, though I'll agree that a run-off with a victory for current president would be the best situation from that perspective. Ultimately, I'm uncertain how much the 'truth' of the matter will have anything to do with the results (in terms of acceptance vs conflict).

 

Is it me, or do most elections in any non-occidental country have corruption issues. Afghanistan, Iran, most of all Africa, even Ukraine, a few years back. We're a long way away from world democracy...

 

Triactus, US elections have had some controversy (and not just recently, either). I'd bet every democracy in history that's gone through any even slightly close or surprising election has had controversy and accusations of corruption. It's the nature of the beast.

 

Oh yeah, I understand that. I still wonder weather or not Bush was even elected once. It's sad that the power hungry people out there ruin things for all of us.

 

Honestly, I'm still uncertain whether Obama legitimately won, but it's not something that's going to be fixed now. In the US, the difference between candidates and positions isn't great enough to drive any serious action (that's right, even Bush and Obama are similar enough that few would consider civil war over the difference), but things are often very different in areas like Afghanastan, Iraq, and Africa.

 

Why is that?

 

Why which? That I'm not sure it happened legitimately, or that it won't be fixed now? The first, because of the same old accusations of ballot stuffing and the like. The second, because, even if hard evidence were found, I honestly doubt they'd unseat America's first black president to put an old, white republican in his place.

 

Are you for real? I take it you weren't aware that Obama garnered 52.9% of the vote to McCain's paltry 45.7% and 365 electoral votes to McCain's 173? Knowing that, one would either have to be incredibly gullible or incredibly stupid to believe it is even possible to steal a heavily regulated election in the United States by such a large margin. Since you are neither stupid nor gullible, I'll just assume you didn't know that Obama won by the largest electoral mandate since Bush Sr trounced Michael Dukakis back in 1988.

 

That says it all. And that's about how much time I'm going to waste on this non-starter of a topic....

 

Hello Chandos.

I thought Obama won via legit means. Haven't heard serious allegations otherwise.

I hope the non-starter topic you referred to wasn't mine.

 

Drew, Obama won by a huge margin in the electoral college, yes, but only through usually small margins in strategically large states. He got pretty much all the big states by varying margins (many of them quite small) and then his share of the smaller states. That's a huge electoral vote compared to what was far from a landslide in the actual vote. And yes, I believe an organized, national campaign could easily rig a couple of % on the national election. Believe it or not, beating the national election system isn't that hard. Just look at the 'dead vote', at the people that were payed to register dozens of times, under false names and addresses, and the like. Now, in this case, I believe at least most of that was most likely benign and didn't result in any major corruption, but taking a look at that you can see how easy it would be.

Mind you, I'm not saying Obama won by fraud, I'm just saying that I haven't seen satisfying answers to everything. I originally said I wasn't sure, and by that I mean I'm not sure.

 

Hi, pplr. No not at all. I'm just not going to waste my time on anything like what NOG is suggesting about Obama. It appears we have too many useless, off-topic rants already. And I'm not about to start wasting anyone's time on this one....

 

NOG, you clearly have no idea just how pervasive a fraud would be required to swing an election where the victor had more than a 7% margin of victory in the popular vote and more than twice the votes in the electoral college. Since I'm sure we can both agree that there is no way on God's green eath that voter fraud could have contributed in any meaningful way to states Obama only won by 5% or more (meaning that 5% of all ballots cast were fraudulent, and every last one of those fraudulent ballots was cast for Obama*), lets look at the states he won by less than 5% of the vote. There are four of them. Obama won NC by 0.3 points, Indiana by 1 point, Florida by 2.8 points, and Ohio by 3.8 points. The other 2 states with margins less than 5% already went to McCain, so we can leave them out.

Let's forget for a moment about the fact that, in order to swing these states, Obama supporters would have needed to stuff the ballots with hundreds of thousands of illegal votes while McCain staffers attempted no voter fraud whatsoever (since pro-McCain fraud would cancel out pro-Obama fraud) and pretend that Obama really did steal all 4 states. Florida, North Carolina, Indiana , and Ohio add up to a mere 73 votes changing the electoral total from a 365-173 route to a 292-246 route. Even if the preposterous and utterly unsubstantiated notion that Obama somehow used voter fraud to swing these states his way were true, McCains still loses. By a lot.

If you can find even a shred of evidence to support the notion that Obama managed to stuff Florida ballots with 236,451 fraudulent votes, stuffing North Carolina ballots with 14,178, Indiana ballots with 28,392, and Ohio ballots with a staggering 262,225 fraudulent votes while McCain supporters submitted none whatsoever, I will start eating meat after over 10 years of vegetarianism, renounce atheism, convert to Christianity, and vote Republican for the rest of my life.

* A statistical impossibility. Voter fraud is extraordinarily rare as it is, and it is not exclusive to one party or the other. Fraudulent votes have, in fact, been found to reflect the popular vote, so unless a race is a 50/50 dead heat where every last vote counts (like the Franken/Coleman race in Minnesota) the fraction of a fraction of a fraction of one percent of illegal votes cast that actually manage to worm their way through our safeguards is literally -- not figuratively, but literally -- incapable of swinging the outcome of an election.

 

Hmm, the bit on recognized voter fraud reflecting the popular vote is interesting. I didn't know that.

 

I don't really think its all that interesting. You didn't seriously think that partisan affiliation was in any way indicative of a person's propensity to engage in criminal activity, did you? If you really think about it, it's pretty obvious.

EDIT: Sorry, DMC, when I started work on this post, you hadn't added your warning, yet.

 

No, Drew, but I did expect fraud to substantially favor the expected looser. After all, it's the underdog that gets desperate, not the favored. I also expected substantial fluctuation with the radical nature of the support. For example, most of the Republican radicals weren't exactly fired up over McCain (though they were over Palin).

DMC: at least in terms of the general pattern of fraud, I think this post relates as well to Afghanastan as to the US.

Incidentally, while I recognize the odds are low, does anyone know anything about recognized voter fraud trends outside the US? I'm wondering if the pattern holds or if it's a US phenomenon.

 

NOG, it is important to keep in mind that voter fraud on the part of a campaign is almost unheard of in these United States. The problem for a campaign trying to commit voter fraud is that they would need to involve a lot of people in a conspiracy. Knowing that, most campaigns won't risk it. That time, money and manpower is better spent driving people that will vote your way to the polls or using legal methods to cheat like push-polls or blatantly false but plausibly deniable smear ads. Most successful instances of "fraud" are perpetrated by individual operators, hence the inability for it to influence election outcomes in any meaningful way.

In a country like Iran that lacks our level of oversight, though, fraud can be more easily be carried out by campaigns. That type of fraud, however, isn't voter fraud -- since the perpetrators aren't voters.

 

Dude, what are you talking about? There are blatant cases of voting fraud in the US!

Micah used his techno super powers to talk to the voting machines and so Nathan Petrelli won his senetorial seat in a landslide! pfff... thinks he knows it all...