Afghan Presidential Election, 2009 - Low Voter Turnout

Low Voter Turnout

While UN, American and Afghan officials quickly hailed the election as a success, evidence from observers on the ground and from journalists suggested that the Taliban had succeeded in deterring many Afghans from voting.

At the end of the voting day, top election official Zekria Barakzai estimated the voter turnout across the country at around 40–50%. One Western diplomat slapped aside 50 percent as a "joke". On August 21, New York Times article reported that overall turnout was expected to be about 40%. On August 26, The Daily Telegraph reported that turnout may have been little more than 35% nationwide and was less than 10% in some districts of Helmand and Kandahar.

Figures released by the IEC on August 31, when the ballots from almost half of the country's polling stations had been counted, pointed to a turnout of only 30% to 35%. Most of the ballots counted to that point were from the north of the country.

Independent election observers in the country almost all agreed that voter turnout was far lower than in the previous presidential election in 2004.

The turnout was uneven across the country with low turnout in the south and east of Afghanistan, suppressed by lack of security and disenchantment, while vote participation was somewhat higher in the more stable north and west of the country, including some reports of long lines of voters seen outside polling stations.

Voter turnout in the eastern city of Jalalabad was low at no more than 20–30%, according to election observer Tim Fairbank: "A lot of people have told us they were afraid to vote, and afraid to have their fingers dipped in ink because of the Taliban's threats." The government, on the other hand, was expected to claim that it was more like 60% in the area.

In the Pashtun-dominated southern provinces, turnout was as low as 5–10%, according to one Western official. In some parts of the country almost no women voted.

In Khan Neshin, Helmand province, in the south of Afghanistan, election officials estimated that only 250 to 300 people – out of an estimated population of 35,000 to 50,000 in a region larger than Connecticut – showed up to vote at the single polling station available for the area. Not a single woman voted, according to the district governor, Massoud Ahmad Rassouli Balouch.

In Babaji district of Helmand province, where 10 British soldiers were killed in Operation Panther's Claw, a British offensive launched against insurgents a few weeks ahead of the elections, reports indicated that only about 150 people voted out of a population of 55,000. One election observer said no more than 15 people voted at the polling centre where he was based.

In another Helmand province district of 70,000 people, barely 500 people voted, while in one town of 2,000 residents, only 50 people voted.

Voter turnout in Kandahar city, Afghanistan's second largest city, was estimated to be down 40% from the previous election in 2004. Noor Ahmad, a resident of Zerai District, said: "The turnout is very low, perhaps less than 5 percent."

In the Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province, RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent in Kandahar, Dawa Khan Meenapal, said that people voted heavily but overall turnout was lower than in past elections, and that participation by women was very low.

In Lashkargah, the provincial capital of Helmand, Mohammad Aliyas Daee, a Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent in Helmand, similarly reported that "the overall participation of women was negligible." Voter turnout, by one estimate, was at below 20% in the city, considered to be more secure than the rest of the province.

In the southeastern Uruzgan province, the deputy police chief, Mohammad Nabi, estimated the province-wide turnout to be less than 40%, saying that "people had no interest".

Voting in the capital city Kabul also appeared to have been depressed, with one estimate placing turnout at only 30%. Officials, witnesses, and journalists at several polling stations reported low participation numbers. Afghan journalist and research analyst, Abdulhadi Hairan, observed that the low voter turnout in Kabul resulted in reporters and cameramen having to wait nearly to midday before having enough voter interviews to send back to their news organizations. (Photojournalist Peter Nicholls of The Times provided a similar first-person account of low voter turnout in Pul-e-Charkhi, outside Kabul.) Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's main opponent in the presidential election, called the low voter turnout in Kabul "unsatisfactory."

"The early information is that the turnout was very low in some provinces and at best was fair in others." —Haroun Mir, director of Afghanistan's Centre for Research & Policy Studies

The polls in Afghanistan, originally scheduled to close at 4 p.m. after nine hours of voting, had been held open an hour longer in a last-minute decision by the Independent Election Commission.