god* what a jackass...,
2004-08-31 17:43:34
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your friendly police state...,
2004-09-01 11:27:36
from the department of doing what we do to afghanistan:
one of those ivory tower types bends down from the heights to discuss something that actually catches my interest,
from the pinnacles of MY, via cursor:
While it's quite true that over 10 million Afghans have registered to vote (10.35 million, to be exact), there are only 9.8 million eligible voters in the country. What we're seeing isn't an unprecedented outpouring of democratic enthusiasm, it's massive fraud. Registration cards are selling for as much as $100 a pop. The government, meanwhile, has no effective authority over anything.
The UN 'estimates' have been revisded upwards with rising registration rolls, and:
Only a little arithmetic shows the figures are dubious.
Only 42% of those registered are women. That means some 750,000 women are not registered.
The shortfall of women means the only way the 10m-plus figure for registered voters can be accurate is if every single male in the country has registered - at least once.
And that ignores an estimated one third of a million unregistered people in conflict-ridden parts of the south and south-east of Afghanistan.
So it is painfully evident that the registration process has been seriously flawed.
There are constant reports of individuals brandishing two or more voting cards, usually announcing they have acquired extra ones as an investment.
The more optimistic hope to make $100 or more per card by selling them - serious money in a country where most people earn less than that per month.
This article doesn't exactly jive with recent history, however: it states "When the total reached 9.9m UN officials in Kabul hastily upped the estimated total of voters to 10.5 million", but last January fewer than 275,000 of an "estimated 10 million" voters have registered for elections , and by March the number was up to 1.5 million registered of an "estimated 10.5 million" eligible voters. When were the numbers revised up to 10.5, at 1.5 registered or 9.9? The places to find out would be UNAMA and the UNDP Country Office, whose August project update mentions no estimates, and, far as I can tell, no estimates are made anywhere.
Other points stand, and so does this:
With the country still in ruins, 180,000 displaced persons and more than 2 million refugees in the surrounding region, all of whom are eligible to vote, such a figure is implausible.
Which then goes on to explain why it doesn't matter anyway. Because Afghanistan remains fucked.