Here’s a brief review to ring out the old year.

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• Federalism and Democracy Development
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Returning from last year, Why Do People Protest still lands in the Top 5 posts on the blog.  The other Top 5 posts are:

• The Simpsons Turn 20
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• Event: Emerging Leaders for Democracy

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Another of last year’s posts (Obama Needs a Vision Check) continues to be one of the most commented posts.  The others include:

• Freedom of Religion and US Foreign Policy
• I Stand by My Post
• Our Long National Nightmare Is Over
• Economic Success & Regime Change

Thank You

We’d like to say thank you to all of our Fans, Friends and followers, and in particular, to the following for ReTweeting, linking, and generally loving our stuff!

• Gregg Wilhauck at the CIPE Development Blog
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Happy New Year from all of us at D&S and Georgetown CDACS!

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Talking to a group of Kuchi about the Wolesi Jirga elections

Going to National Democratic Institute’s “Preliminary Observations and Analysis of Afghanistan’s Parliamentary Elections” event last Friday helped me reflect on my own experiences as an election observer there. For example, I couldn’t help but agree with Peter Manikas, Director of NDI’s Asia programs, when he stated that, “This was really 34 elections.” Weeks after the election I’m still learning and reading about things that allegedly happened in places like Wardak and Ghor that seem to contrast sharply with what our teams saw in Panjshir.

As for broad trends, Mr. Manikas spoke of Afghanistan having almost two distinct electoral systems: one in the areas of instability, and another in the more stable areas. While fraud and violence troubled the former, he maintained that in the latter elections looked much like they did elsewhere in South Asia. I’m no South Asia expert (though I’m pretty sure Pakistan and India alike have been plagued by electoral violence at various times), but I took this to mean that the elections in those areas appear to have been executed to a reasonable standard.

But what to make of all the complaints that are pouring in? As the panel noted, during last year’s presidential and provincial races the Electoral Complaints Commission received 2300 formal complaints; this year there have already been over 3500. But numbers without context don’t tell much of a story. For one thing, the way the SNTV electoral system works in Afghanistan – particularly in districts with many seats allocated for them in parliament – creates a lot of losing candidates. And as Mr. Manikas pointed out, a mass of angry losers with incentives to yell fraud to hungry news cameras may have generated much of the negative media coverage of the elections.

My own experience interacting with the media suggested to me that, from the outset, they wanted to focus on fraud and challenges and generally put a negative spin on things. But they seemed more interested in looking for donkeys carrying ballot boxes up mountains than in interviewing candidates. The candidates, though – if our interviews with them are any indicator – would have been happy to talk about their misgivings or even allegations of fraud quite candidly.

Campaign posters dot Panjshir's rugged roadway

So complaints and negative press may have been easy to predict for these elections. But Scott Worden – a former member of Afghanistan’s ECC – pointed out on the panel that a sizable amount of fraud was anticipated, too. (With previous elections being so problematic, a little expectation management was surely in order) Mr. Worden went on to maintain that the the real story of these elections is not the fraud per se, but how the fraud gets dealt with.

This is particularly critical in areas such as Ghazni (a large, multiethnic central province) in which alleged fraud and other irregularities – or even the closing of polling stations, as I touched on earlier – might be perceived as biased against one ethnic group, political group, clan, etc. If such cases are not settled satisfactorily, the consequences could range from voter disillusionment to violence.

And so my final thought on this experience is that election day was truly just the beginning. With preliminary results for all 34 provinces due to be announced on 8OCT (at the earliest), and with thousands of complaints for the Provincial- and Kabul-level complaints commissions to adjudicate, this will be clearly be as critical a time in the election cycle as any. I would have liked to stay in Panjshir longer to follow up with some of the officials, candidates, and everyday people we met to see how they perceive the process and its final results. Because ultimately, as Mr. Worden pointed out, it is the Afghans who must tell us if the results make sense in their province…and if they will accept them.

Checking newly-arrived elections materials in Dara, Panjshir Province

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I was ready to see anything, since much of the fraud perpetrated in Afghanistan’s 2005 parliamentary and 2009 presidential/provincial elections had taken place at women’s polling stations, for several reasons. Because the gender divide is rigidly enforced here, police generally can’t search women or enter their stations. And many female stations, for reasons of modesty, access, or lack of other options, have in the past been located in private homes – where anything can happen. On top of all this, women are not required, like men, to have their picture on their voter ID card, leaving open the possibility they can vote with someone else’s card – even multiple times.

So I was a little surpised to walk in and basically witness a textbook-perfect operation. The four female staff members were young, maybe high school age, but clearly had experience or training or both. They set up the tables and voting booth in a simple and standard way that ensured voter secrecy and ease of movement. They accounted for sensative materials and recorded the number of blue tie on the ballot box that had broken and had to be replaced. When they were done with setup and everything had been verified by the polling station manager, the staff took turns getting up to vote before opening the station to the general public – which trickled in in a slow but steady stream of women voters. And throughout the process, female accredited candidate agents watched for any irregularities.

Not all of the polling stations we visited in Panjshir on election day were this well-run. Some had missing materials, or were set up poorly, or had unauthorized people inside the station. At most stations the hole-punch to mark people’s voting cards had failed to work, and so staff had proceeded to cut the cards with scissors in almost any manner they chose. At the end of the day, though, we gave passing marks to every single station we visited (about 15 of them) – though the female ones, on the whole, scored better then the males’.

How interesting it was to come back to Kabul and hear that many observation team had had quite different – even opposite – experiences from ours. Some teams felt that in their area, women had been largely and/or systematically disenfranchised. Women’s polling stations were empty. In other areas, observers had seen women bussed in to vote en masse, overwhelming the polling station staff. Some groups of women were apparently using this technique to avoid having their fingers dipped in indelible ink – which would allow them to vote again somewhere else. These stations were apparently quite chaotic. And not every observer team felt that elections in their assigned province deseverved passing marks. One team even suspected that they had witnessed signs of systematic fraud.

Almost a week after the elections, Democracy International hasn’t come out with even a preliminary official statement (at least two other groups have). I don’t think it’s hard to see why; as easy as it was to be impessed with some of the things we saw in Panjshir on election day, so too must it be easy to be disouraged by some of the things observers saw in other provinces. Gaining a clear and comprehensive idea of how things went nationwide for Afghanistan on election day is going to take time, and even with time it is unclear, of course, that our understanding will be complete or even sufficient. Challenges of access, sample size, quality of data, and others must be taken into account. DI is continuing to follow up in Kabul and in other provinces, and when they do issue a report I am sure it will be honest about both their findings and their limitations.

In the meantime, I’ve come home to family and friends who have been concerned due to reports in the media over Afghanistan’s electoral violence. It seems that this issue has drawn most of the attention back home, and indeed, ISAF recently announced that electoral violence this year did, in fact, surpass last year’s levels. But even though violence did spike with the election – as predicted – and that spike was greater than last year’s, numbers don’t necessarily say it all. Were all those security incidents targeted at elections officials, candidates and voters, or do they include the general violence inherent in a larger counter-insurgency effort? And even if this was a more violent election on the whole, how do we rate the election if, hypothetically, it went relatively well and fraud-free in nonviolent areas like Panjshir?

It’s wrong to extrapolate my experiences there to apply to the whole country, but it’s also wrong to overlook them. So for now, I’m telling anyone who asks to take them, like some of the headlines they’ve been reading, for what they are, and with several grains of salt.

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I realized that I might be sent almost anywhere, since Democracy International is endevouring to send observers to a representative sample of locations throughout the country. Part of me wanted to return to Ghazni Province, where I was stationed, to see how things have changed. But Ghazni is apparently such a high-risk area now that it is off limits to our delegation. Which is too bad, because 107 of Ghazni’s 379 polling centers have been closed by Afghanistan’s Independent Electoral Commission due to security concerns – to the protest of many of the province’s residents (see story here) who believe that they are being disenfranchised. Ghazni would have been an interesting place to observe how the ongoing war is affecting the election.

But I am happy to be reporting now from a much smaller, much safer province than Ghazni – which I will not name here, in order to keep my partner and I (and the people we interact with) safe. Like much of the country, it has some astonishing mountain views and a rich local history and culture.

Three of the reasons I am happy to be an LTO here so far (besides the idyllic views) are the following:

1) Greater freedom to move and interact with people. One of the first things to go out the window when you are working in a war zone appears to be freedom of movement. I recall that as a soldier on a PRT, I could only go “outside the wire” in a highly visible, pre-planned military convoy. I was hoping/expecting that being a civilian would mean greater freedom of movement, but clearly this isn’t always true (especially now). The observer teams that are operating in higher-risk parts of the country are taking necessary precautions that, unfortunately, limit their time on the ground.

By contrast, my team and I spent a few hours yesterday celebrating the Eid holiday in a village nestled in the mountains. It just sort of happened: one minute we were scouting out the local polling station and asking residents what they thought about this year’s candidates for MP, the next we were being ushered into someone’s home for some chai and traditional food.

I felt especially privileged to have the option of eating with the women, away from the main feast. In a side room we sat on the floor and, over tea and snacks, three generations of women told me how excited they were to vote for the popular female candidate and why they thought she would do a good job. Then the grandmother insisted that I was not eating enough; grandmothers are truly the same everywhere.

2) Exposure to important (non-security) issues. Many polling centers have been closed by the IEC in this province, too – but if security is not an issue here, what can account for these closures? The local election authorities have told us that centers that experienced low voter turnout last year were the ones selected for closure. But one local candidate calls this excuse dubious, and even drew a map of significant population centers where polling stations have been closed. Another candidate maintains that only the voting stations for females (they are segregated here) have been closed at these locations due to the high levels of fraud they experienced in last year’s election.

The polling center issue has been an interesting one to investigate because it highlights many of the concerns that may affect this election. Closing polling centers risks disenfranchising voters, especially in more remote areas. But keeping polling centers open that cannot be adequately secured,staffed, or monitored presents more opportunities for fraud. In making decisions about which polling centers to close or move, has the Independent Electoral Commission acted in an informed way that takes into account local circumstances?

And what about the fact that much of the cheating that took place in the 2005 and 2009 elections occured in women’s polling stations? Some of our interviewees have told us that, previously, the cultural requirement that women stay segregated from men during the voting process meant that women’s voting stations were often in private houses. Families and communities stuffed ballot boxes while poll workers went to lunch. So now women’s polling stations must be in public places, which perhaps accounts for some of the polling station closures here. But one candidate here is still so concerned about the lack of supervision at female polling centers that she has recruited an all-female election observation team.

The challenges of fraud mitigation, voter access, and safeguarding women’s enfranchisement – though often overshadowed and/or complicated by security concerns elsewhere – are undoubtedly relevant in much of the rest of Afghanistan. But here at least we have the chance to explore these issues in some depth on the ground.

3) The chance of going to bed on election night. Afghanistan has selected an electoral system does not favor the formation of political parties; voters instead make their choice from a list of mainly independent candidates. In some of the country’s larger constituencies, the ballot might look like a hard copy of Facebook, with candidate names, symbols, and pictures taking up several pages. When voting ends on 1600 on the 18th, poll workers must start going through each and every page of these ballots to ensure that they are not double-marked or otherwise spoiled. Sure, each station can only have 600 ballots, but if each ballot is 10 pages, that’s still 6000 pages of ballots to check carefully.

Observing the vote count in this relatively small province should be considerably less of an arduous task. After a long day of election observation, I am sure that we will appreciate having fewer candidates on the ballot. In fact, I am appreciating it already: after only a week here, my partner and I had already managed to speak with most of the candidates. This province may not be a microcosm of Afghanistan, but doing as thorough a job as we can of observing the election process unfold here will surely provide some useful insights.

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I wonder whether the ’strong’ parties that might result from more party-centric electoral rules would be all that great. If, for example, closed-list PR turns divided societies’ elections into “national identity referenda,”would programmatic coherence and party discipline be such great ideas?

I agree completely. A more cohesive party system is only likely to sharpen ethnic tension in Afghanistan. The country has enough problems already. Weak parties are probably an asset.

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In the world of electoral system design, there are advantages and disadvantages to the many types of systems that exist.  It would probably be incorrect to say that any one system is “better” than another, because better is dependent upon what your priorities are.  One of the many advantages of a proportional representation, or PR system, for example, is that it does a relatively good job of ensuring that electors’ votes accurately translate into who is elected with less “wasted votes.” While it may be wrong to say which system is better, however, I don’t think it’s wrong to look at a system and question what its priorities are.  Sudan is a good case in point.  The nation claims to have a parallel system, which includes a significant amount of PR seats, yet the Sudanese have managed to create a PR tier that doesn’t actually deliver any of the advantages the system is designed to provide.

From IFES electionguide:

60 percent of seats are elected by plurality vote in single-member districts. 15 percent of seats are elected under closed-list proportional representation. Multi-member constituencies correspond to states, and the threshold is 4 percent in each. Finally, 25 percent of seats are elected under closed-list proportional representation from lists that may contain only women. Again, the constituencies correspond to states, and the threshold is 4 percent in each.

Let’s take look at this; out of 450 seats, only 15 and 25 percent respectively are PR tiers.  That means there 112 seats for the women’s tier and 67 seats for the standard one.  Then if we further break them down based on states, of which there are 25 in Sudan, it leaves us with an average of 4.48 seats per district for the women’s tier and 2.68 for the regular.  At this point, what is the purpose of the four percent threshold?  Would there be any district large enough where winning a seat wouldn’t automatically give you four percent?  I’m really curious as to the decision making process in this.  Was the threshold put in without thought as to what purpose it is supposed to serve, because somebody was once told that PR systems should have thresholds?  Or is it strategically there to give the illusion that this is a real system?

Unfortunately, Sudan isn’t the only country that wants to obfuscate the realities of its electoral system.  The Philippines, which will be having a general election on May 10, also has a PR, party-list, tier, which is supposed to contain twenty percent of all seats in the Parliament.  Twenty percent isn’t a lot, and it certainly fails to undermine the clientelist system that Filipino reformers are hoping to overcome.  What’s most disturbing about this party-list tier, however, is that parties are awarded one seat for every two percent of the vote received, while being capped at three seats total.  It’s not surprising, that given these rules, the tier is extremely weak, contains a myriad of insignificant parties, and suffers from a drop off in voter participation.  In fact the seats, which were designed to be filled with representatives of sectoral minorities, are often just filled with allies of the country’s elite class, further ensuring that the system in no way meets any of its stated objectives.

Both of these examples are significant, in that they demonstrate the many ways elites can rig or at least bias an election.  None of these flaws are accidents; you have to try really hard to make a system this ineffective.  (When you design a system where the Energy Secretary and son of the President both win seats reserved for the disadvantaged, you know you’ve done something impressive).

The election monitoring industry is extremely focused on what happens on election day, but in reality,  it’s the decisions made long before any votes are cast that really matter.  In his book Beyond Free and Fair, Eric Bjonrland discusses the international community’s failure to address pre-election conditions in Cambodia’s 1998 election, and the ensuing dilemma over whether to legitimate the outcome.  While the democracy assistance community doesn’t make mistakes like Cambodia anymore, I feel we still don’t do enough to assess how the rules of the game affect the outcomes.

This isn’t to say that election day monitoring isn’t important, it certainly is.  We need to keep in mind, however, that in this day and age, only amateurs rig elections on election day, real professionals make sure they know the outcome beforehand.

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