Anticipation Grows Around Afghan Fraud Probe

JUDY WOODRUFF:

And for more on where things stand, we have one of the writers of that Washington Post story. Karen DeYoung is the senior diplomatic correspondent. She joins us now from the paper's newsroom.

Karen, thank you for talking with us.

KAREN DEYOUNG, The Washington Post:

Thank you, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

You cite sources with knowledge for what the commission is doing, this Electoral Complaints Commission, as finding the results stunning. What exactly did they find?

KAREN DEYOUNG:

What they found was that, from their sampling — and they didn't look at all the disputed votes — they took a — what they considered a representative sample — that President Karzai, who the national electoral commission had found, preliminarily, received 54 percent of the vote, actually had received only about 47 percent, somewhere in the high 40s.

And that would trigger, as you said in your piece, a runoff between him and his — and his second — the second in the race, Abdullah Abdullah.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

So, as you say, this was just a sampling of ballots, so how certain can they be of these results, of this conclusion?

KAREN DEYOUNG:

Well, President Karzai and the other actors in Afghanistan all agreed to this Complaints Commission. They agreed to the way in which they were going to sample the votes.

They did about 3,300 polling stations, only those in which it was reported that 100 percent of eligible voters voted or 95 percent of all of those who voted, voted for one candidate. And they took those, and they extrapolated on a larger pallet. And most of the complaints and most of what they found to be fraudulent votes that they threw out had gone to President Karzai.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

So, Karen, why haven't they announced this yet?

KAREN DEYOUNG:

Well, they are not scheduled to announce it until tomorrow. They were supposed to finalize their results today, communicate them to the government. And they are supposed to officially declare them tomorrow.

Now, President Karzai's spokesman has already come out today and charged that the Complaints Commission was politically manipulated, and, therefore, he will consider any result that they announce a political result, and he will answer in kind. He has never said that he would accept or reject the results of the Complaints Commission.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

So, what's the expectation? Is it expected that he's going to go along with the second round, with a runoff?

KAREN DEYOUNG:

I don't think anybody knows right now.

There is a lot of discussion going on between the Afghan electoral commission and the complaints panel that's going to issue its report tomorrow. The electoral commission, supposedly, is questioning the way the Complaints Commission did their work, and saying that its conclusions are not legitimate.

You know, one could say that this will all end very badly. One could also say — and I think this is what the Obama administration is hoping — that this is democracy at work, this is political haggling, and that they hopefully will come out with a solution that will allow the process in Afghanistan to move forward.