A popular narrative of Afghanistan’s 2009 elections that gave incumbent President Hamid Karzai another term is that the vote was fraudulent and therefore produced an illegitimate result. It’s a story line that has poisoned thinking about next year’s presidential election and stymied efforts to prepare adequately for a vote that will be taking place as the U.S.-led international military coalition withdraws most of its forces at the end of 2014.

Deputy Director of USIP’s Afghanistan Program Scott Smith, who had a front-row seat to the controversy as special assistant to then-United Nations Special Representative to Afghanistan Kai Eide, counters that the 2009 election demonstrated some successes that can form the basis for a more constructive way of viewing and preparing for the 2014 elections.

“If we recognize that some things worked, we can build on them, instead of wringing our hands and saying that Afghans are incapable of having a functional election and [that] it’s not worth our bother to support them doing so,” Smith told an audience at USIP on April 5. With sufficient support and commitment, there is a reasonable chance that the 2014 process will produce a legitimate outcome, and the international community shouldn’t allow misconceptions of the 2009 vote to feed assumptions that next year’s elections will fail.

There are two main arguments in the prevailing narrative on the failure of the 2009 Afghan elections. The first is that massive fraud was committed by Karzai, and that the international community, particularly the United Nations, allowed it to happen. The second is that the Afghan electoral system itself was so flawed that it created an illegitimate outcome.

Smith offers a different perspective. Evidence that the 2009 elections actually were in many ways successful indicates that next year’s elections could very likely produce legitimate results that will promote the stability of a post-2014 Afghanistan.

First, Smith asserts, much of the fraud committed for Karzai was not done by Karzai. “Without excusing the palace, which at times behaved very badly, much of the fraud was probably committed independently by low-level officials. Why? Appointment power,” Smith explained. Almost every politician was appointed directly or indirectly Karzai himself. In many cases these low-level officials became “overzealous” during the 2009 elections. They concluded that Karzai must win again so that they would be reappointed.

The opposition in 2009 was widely divided, and many of those wielding the most influence were on Karzai’s side anyway. “I don’t believe Karzai ever doubted that he would win less than 50 percent” of the vote, Smith stated. There was, therefore, little incentive for Karzai to commit massive fraud.

Additionally, much of the fraud committed was so blatant that it was embarrassing to Karzai. It was, quite frankly, much more amateurish than what Karzai would have reasonably ordered, Smith said.

Second, the Afghan electoral system and the institutions designed to support it were undoubtedly flawed, but they were not so defective that they produced an illegitimate outcome. In fact, despite the contentious process and occasional international arm-twisting it took to get there, Afghanistan’s electoral institutions ultimately produced a legitimate result that adhered to the constitution and the country’s electoral laws.

Once reports from polling stations began coming in immediately after the August 20, 2009, election, it was apparent that a huge amount of fraud had taken place. Many of the fraud prevention mechanisms had failed. However, other mechanisms succeeded in detecting and mitigating the fraud that did occur.

There were two main “triggers” that the electoral authorities used to isolate ballot boxes on the suspicion that they were fraudulent – first, when 95 percent of votes at a polling station were cast for a single candidate, and secondly, when all possible votes at a location were cast.

As vote tallies came in, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), the Karzai-appointed Afghan-led body tasked with administering the elections, began setting aside ballot boxes deemed to be fraudulent based on the triggers. Many of these ballots being set aside were coming from the Karzai-backed Pashtun South. At the same time, Smith explained, anti-Karzai votes, which did not exhibit signs of fraud as determined by the triggers, were coming in from the rest of the country. The net result of these two developments was that Karzai’s percentage of the vote was dropping quickly toward 50 percent. If Karzai received less than half the total votes, a runoff election would have to be held according to the country’s electoral law. A runoff would likely lead to political instability and, perhaps more importantly to the IEC, Karzai could lose the election.

The IEC suddenly ruled that it did not have the legal authority to continue quarantining ballot boxes that met the triggers. Smith explained that the result of putting these votes back into the mix gave Karzai a total of 56 percent. While the Presidential Palace was satisfied with this result, the international community immediately realized what a disaster it would be if the result stood -- “a Karzai victory resulting from an obviously partial and legally unfounded decision by a body whose every member had been selected by Karzai,” Smith said.

The Electoral Complaints Commission, a body whose three of five members had been appointed by the U.N., ruled that the IEC had acted incorrectly and must reapply all the triggers and carry out a recount or audit. The IEC accepted this ruling despite the fact that its office was mandated by the constitution, while the ECC was a foreign-dominated body whose existence was only vested in the electoral law.

After negotiations that lasted several weeks, the audit began in early September 2009.

“I cannot tell you how fraught those weeks were as we waited for the result of the audit,” Smith said. “None of us, at that point, wanted a second round.” With winter fast approaching, there would be no way to hold the runoff election until June the following year. This would result in a power vacuum of about nine months with no president declared. But allowing the obviously fraudulent votes to count would be a clear violation of the electoral laws.

In late October 2009, the IEC and ECC completed the audit. 1.5 million of the 7 million votes cast were removed, resulting in Karzai only receiving 48.6 percent of the vote. A runoff election would be necessary, no matter the political instability it might cause.

Karzai immediately questioned the methodology of the audit. “Accepting that he had less than a majority of the votes cut against everything that Karzai had experienced in politics or seen around him” in the broader region, Smith explained. China does not allow full suffrage. The Central Asian states have had the same leaders since independence, except for Turkmenistan, whose leader died as “President for Life” in 2006). Iran’s 2009 election led to massive demonstrations and blood in the streets. And most of Pakistan’s elections have seen serious irregularities or resulted in intervening coups.

Additionally, Karzai was (perhaps rightfully so) under the impression that some in the international community did not want him to win, a factor that could feed any conspiracy theory he might have entertained that international organizations were plotting to keep him from being re-elected. Richard Holbrooke, then-President’s Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, had led a fairly open campaign to support opposition candidates.

“To Karzai, the fact that he had fallen from 56 percent to just under 50 percent of the vote at the hands of an internationally-dominated complaints commission, fulfilling Holbrooke’s earlier stated policy, looked like conspiracy,” Smith said. “This is not to excuse Karzai’s reluctance” to accept the results, “but to explain it.”

At the same time then-Senator John Kerry happened to be visiting Kabul. Kerry had become one of the few American representatives to cultivate a cordial relationship with Karzai, and played a significant role in ultimately convincing the Afghan president to agree to a runoff election. Despite his reservations, Karzai agreed.

A runoff election was not held in the end. Abdullah Abdullah, the second-place candidate to Karzai, said he would only contest the runoff if certain electoral reforms were enacted first. Karzai refused, and Abdullah renounced his candidacy, saying he had no confidence that the result of the runoff would be legitimate.

The Karzai-appointed Supreme Court said that, because there was no challenger, the other candidate automatically won without the need for a runoff election. And so Karzai was re-elected.

Despite the fraud that was undoubtedly committed across the country, the detection mechanisms worked, and, more importantly, the Afghan institutions ultimately worked. In the end, 1.5 million of the 7 million votes were discarded, and the international community repeatedly and successfully pressed for the steps needed to produce a legitimate result.

Smith describes the outcome of the 2009 elections as “a success we would never want to repeat, but nonetheless an event where serious institutional and societal failures were corrected by institutional and societal mechanisms.”

If you still don’t believe that the 2014 elections could lead to a legitimate outcome, Smith offered an example from another country:

Ten years after a civil war, an election is marked by significant disenfranchisement and widespread fraud in the country’s south that leads to a major political crisis. The decisions of an electoral commission set up to adjudicate the resulting dispute are rejected by one of the factions, and the election ultimately has to be resolved through a political deal.

That election was in 1877 in the United States, and the candidates were Rutherford B. Hayes and James Tilden. Not only did the results of that election, in which Hayes stepped into the presidency, produce a legitimate outcome, they also created the political stability necessary for the country to move beyond the cleavages of the Civil War.

Emily Horin works in Washington for USIP’s Afghanistan and Pakistan programs.