IOM establishes over 1,600 polling stations for Afghan vote

More than 1,600 polling stations have been set up by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) at more than 600 locations in Pakistan to conduct the Afghan Out of Country Registration and Voting (OCRV) exercise. "Due to the accelerated time frame under which the out of country elections had to be organised, there are certain inherent operational limitations, the main one being that not all regions of Pakistan or Iran will have voting facilities," Peter Erban, head of the IOM OCRV, told a news conference in the Pakistani capital Islamabad on Tuesday. The IOM has been entrusted with the task of conducting the out of country Afghan presidential election on the behalf of the Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). More than one million Afghans, living in Pakistan and Iran, will be given the opportunity to vote when the Afghan presidential elections are held on 9 October this year. To coordinate the OCRV operations, the IOM has established its headquarters in Islamabad and three regional offices in Peshawar, Quetta and the Iranian capital Tehran. Through the regional offices in Pakistan, seven field offices have been established in the provinces of Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Over 300 Registration/polling centres have been set up under four field offices in Peshawar, Mardan, Kohat and Abbottabad in NWFP while more than 325 centres have been set up under three field offices in Balochistan province: Quetta-urban, Quetta-camp and Dalbandin. Four registration/polling centres will be working under the Islamabad regional office. "The number of registration/polling centres and stations varies with regard to the availability of buildings and the density of populations. However, this does not reflect the projected voter population in any way," Erban said, adding, "Eligible voters from any location in Pakistan will be able to register and vote at the established OCRV facilities." The IOM OCRV head said that everything possible would be done to ensure the best possible election for the maximum numbers of Afghans to participate in this historic event. The registration of voters will be held for three days on 1-3 October. The registration stations will remain open on 4 and 5 October for supervised public viewing of the registration lists. To cast a ballot on 9 October, voters will return to the same location at which they registered. Similarly, seven field offices have been established in Iran. They are located in the cities of Tehran, Qom, Esfahan, Shiraz, Kerman, Zahedan and Mashhad. In Iran, no voter registration will be undertaken, as a government registration of Afghan refugees was organised last year. However, voter data will be collected on election day. Immediately after the close of polls, voter list data and ballots from Pakistan and Iran will be collected and transferred, under international supervision, to Kabul for counting. Voter data will not be shared with the host governments of the two countries. "It's very clear, between us and the two host governments, that there will be absolutely no sharing of any of the data that we'll obtain. Voter data that will be collected is for election purposes only and it will be considered the sovereign property of Afghanistan so there will be no sharing of this information at all," Erban told IRIN. "There will be no date entry of any of this data. It will not be available in any consolidated form. We'll have only one set of data that we'll collect and it'll take people's name on the list - handwritten. This list will stay in our custody until election day. On election day we'll use it to check the people who opt to vote. And then this will be flown back to Kabul along with ballots," the IOM OCRV head said. The agency says this has been the largest out of country voting operation for refugees ever held and that no election of this sort has ever been put together in such a short period of time. The IOM has previously organised large-scale out of country operations for elections in East Timor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. "IOM is conducting an election for people who have never voted before in a democratic election, and a great many of those who will be voting are illiterate," an agency press statement said.