Voting Kicks off in Afghanistan’s 4th Presidential Election

Afghan citizens began voting in the country’s fourth presidential election on Saturday, September 28.

The voting process began at around 7 am and continues simultaneously in most of the country’s 34 provinces until 3 pm.

13 candidates including current Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah are running for the president.

According to Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC), 9.6 million voters were registered for the September 28 Election and 4,928 polling centers will be open during the Elections Day.

IEC has also dispatched 38,000 bio-metric devices to the polling centers across the country and only bio-metric confirmed votes will be counted.

Meanwhile, in the early hours of the day, problems with bio-metric devices and the voter’s lists  have been reported in some polling sites.

$149 million have been spent for the 2019 presidential election and Afghan government has paid 60 percent of the allocated money while the U.S., the U.K and the European Union funded the remaining 40 percent.

Moreover, according to Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs, 72,000 members of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces are deployed to ensure the security of the process.