UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations has proposed a set of criteria for Afghanistan’s main electoral body as the audit of the presidential election resumed on Thursday. It called for for separating valid votes from fraudulent ballots cast in the June presidential run-off.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) confirmed that a proposal was presented to the Independent Election Commission (IEC), under whose authority the audit is being carried out, with international supervision.

No ballot boxes were reviewed on Wednesday after confusion between inspectors and further disagreements between the two candidates in the June 14 run-off, Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani.

According to the UN’s new proposal, in the first part of the audit, IEC audit teams are using a 16-point checklist to physically inspect some 23,000 ballot boxes in the auditing warehouses in Kabul.

Auditors are looking at “whether ballot papers in the box were marked according to procedure or show significant patterns of obviously similar markings, and relevant information from the polling station journal and polling station voter log,” according to UNAMA.

That information will then be reviewed by the IEC Board of Commissioners in open meetings –in the presence of international and domestic observers, candidate’s agents, the media and UN advisers – where they will decide to accept, recount or invalidate the results.

Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2014