KABUL (Pajhwok): Documents show Dermalog company has quarantined over 137,630 votes of the Independent Election Commission (IEC)’s central server.

Dermalog is a German company that provides and operates biometric devices in the IEC.

Documents obtained by Pajhwok Afghan News show that Dermalog Company in response to a IEC letter on October 27, said that it verified more than 1,791,703 biometric votes.

Based on the documents, the company has quarantined over 137,630 suspected biometric votes from the IEC’s central server.

The company’s decision comes as Maulana Mohammad Abdullah, an IEC commissioner on October 26 in a Facebook post, had said that at least 770,000 to 900,000 votes were invalidated based on amendments in the electoral law.

He had said two days after the Election Day, provincial IEC offices reported 2,695,890 people had participated in the election.

Abdullah had said latest biometric votes processed in the system showed 1,791,703 to 1,929,333 people had voted on the Election Day but 137,000 of the votes needed review.

According to Dermalog, election workers in many cases registered ballot papers after the official time of voting and before the time early in the morning and biometric devices of such areas were deactivated. Election workers then used precautionary devices for registering voters in the official time, the source said.

It said there were cases in which ballot papers were registered without being polled and two ballot papers were registered in the same ballot booth and these votes have been quarantined.

Zabihullah Sadat, acting IEC spokesman, confirmed 137,000 votes had been the quarantined by Dermalog company and said the decision had been shared with the commission.

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