KABUL (PAN): The results of presidential and provincial council elections, scheduled for 20th of the current month, will be announced on September 17.
Under the election guideline, voters will exercise their franchise at 29,000 polling stations while ballots will be counted at about 7,000 centers.
Voting will begin at 7:00 am and end at 4:00 pm, followed by vote count at polling stations. According to the relevant rules, ballot papers will be sealed and stamped in ballot boxes.
The number of ballot boxes and seals will be duly documented to ensure transparency. The boxes will be transferred to local polling centres before being shifted to provincial capitals and then to Kabul.
Representatives of Electoral Complaints Commission, political parties and candidates, media workers and international observers can visit and stay at polling centres and vote-count stations.
Votes will be checked and categorised -- provincial council and presidential ballots -- before they are counted. When the count ends at a polling station, the result will be immediately announced on the spot.
As an exception necessitated by the high number of candidates for provincial councils in Kabul, Herat and Nangarhar provinces, vote count will begin the morning after polling ends.
Under Article 61 of the Constitution, if no presidential candidate secures the mandatory fifty-plus-one votes, there will be a run-off.
Two weeks after the results are out, the two contenders polling the highest numbers of votes will participate in the run-off.
Noor Muhammad Noor, Independent Election Commission (IEC) spokesman, said new ballot papers would be printed if a run-off was needed.
The run-off cost has already been included in the $223 million budget earmarked for the polls. He added they would have enough time to make preparations for run-off elections.
How the IEC would respond if a candidate did not accept the results, he was asked. Noor replied: "What right a contender has to reject the outcome of a vote monitored by about 0.2 million observers for the elections. No one will have reason to disagree with the result."
mnm/mud
