Afghanistan held parliamentary and provincial council elections on 18 September 2005. On 9 October the first results were declared. Final results were delayed by accusations of fraud, and were finally announced on 12 November. September 18 is the 261st day of the year (262nd in leap years). ... 2005 (MMV) is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... October 9 is the 282nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (283rd in Leap years). ... November 12 is the 316th day of the year (317th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 49 days remaining. ...

Results

Former warlords and their followers gained the majority of seats in both the lower house and the provincial council (which elects the members of the upper house). Women won 28% of the seats in the lower house, 6 more than the 25% guaranteed in the 2004 Constitution.

Turnout

Turnout was estimated at about 50 percent, substantially lower than at the presidential election in October 2004. This is blamed on the lack of identifiable party lists as a result of Afghanistan's new electoral law, which left voters in many cases unclear on who they were voting for. An election to the office of President of Afghanistan was held on October 9, 2004. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Turnout was highest in the Turkmen, Uzbek and Tajik ethnic minority provinces in the north - generally over 60 percent - and lowest (below 30 percent) in some of the Pashtun-speaking south-eastern areas where the Taliban insurgency is strongest. Turnout was also surprisingly low (34 percent) in the capital, Kabul. Tajik may refer to: Tajiks, an ethnicity with dwellers in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and China The Tajik language, the official language of Tajikistan The Arabic-schooled, ethnically Persian administrative caste of the Turco-Persian society. ... Main areas populated by Pashtuns including overlapping regions The Pashtuns (also Pushtun, Pakhtun, ethnic Afghan, or Pathan) are an ethno-linguistic group mainly of eastern Iranian stock living primarily in eastern and southern Afghanistan, and the North West Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Baluchistan provinces of Pakistan. ... Flag flown by the Taliban. ... Kabul Kabul (34°32′ N 69°10′ E, Kâbl, in Persian کابل) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan with a population variously estimated at 2 to 4 million. ...

Electoral system

Approximately twelve million voters were eligible to vote for the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of parliament, and 34 provincial councils. The 2,707 parliament candidates (328 female, 2,379 male) are all independent; parties are not recognized by law and lists do not exist. This has been the subject of criticism: relatively unknown people could win a seat as easily as very popular candidates. It has also made it considerably difficult for the population to decide who to vote for, even though some candidates may be a member of or (financially) backed by a political party. The House of the People, also known natively as the The Wolesi Jirga is the lower house of the bicameral national assembly of Afghanistan. ... A lower house (sometimes known as the first chamber) is one of two chambers of a bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the upper house. ... Afghanistan consists of 34 provinces, or velayat: Map showing provinces of Afghanistan Badakhshan Province Badghis Province Baghlan Province Balkh Province Bamiyan Province Daikondi Province - northern part of Oruzgan Province - established March 28, 2004 Farah Province Faryab Province Ghazni Province Ghowr Province Helmand Province Herat Province Jowzjan Province Kabul Province Kandahar... This article lists political parties in Afghanistan. ...

Another source of criticism is the use of the single, non-transferable vote in multi-member constituencies, particularly in the absence of party lists. In other words, each province elects a number of members, but each voter can vote for only one candidate. This runs the risk of fragmenting the vote to the point where candidates can be elected virtually by chance. Early returns confirm this fear. For example, in Farah Province, one of the first provinces to declare its results, 46 candidates competed for five seats. No candidate polled more than 11 percent, and four of the five elected candidates polled less than 8 percent. This creates the risk of a legislature in which the majority of members have little or no legitimacy.

Because a sizable percentage of the Afghan population is unable to read and write, all candidates had an icon as well. Those icons were included on the lists. These included, but were not limited to, pictures of footballs, cars or different sorts of flowers. Because there were not enough different icons, some candidates had multiple icons as their symbol: two or three footballs behind each other, like Gulallay Habib (page 16 of the Kabul parliament candidate list). For example, the candidate list for the Nurestan section of the parliament looks like this. Candidates were not able to chose the icons themselves: instead, the electoral committee chose them. Forty-five candidates were refused because of connections with armed groups or for not giving up their government jobs. Football is the name given to a number of different team sports. ... Central African Republic Children At Risk Cordillera Administrative Region Cost Accrual Ratio Computer-assisted reporting Cumulative average return This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Wildflowers Flower (Latin flos, floris; French fleur), a term popularly used for the bloom or blossom of a plant, is the reproductive structure of those plants classified as angiosperms (flowering plants; Division Magnoliophyta). ... Kabul province is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. ... Nurestan Province (also spelled Nuristan) is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. ...

People vote for a candidate in their own province. Each province has a number of representatives in parliament, depending on the population. The largest province by population, Kabul, has 33 seats (390 candidates, 50 female, 340 male), whereas the small ones like Nurestan, Nimruz and Panjshir, have only two. Afghanistan consists of 34 provinces, or velayat: Map showing provinces of Afghanistan Badakhshan Province Badghis Province Baghlan Province Balkh Province Bamiyan Province Daikondi Province - northern part of Oruzgan Province - established March 28, 2004 Farah Province Faryab Province Ghazni Province Ghowr Province Helmand Province Herat Province Jowzjan Province Kabul Province Kandahar... Kabul province is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. ... Nurestan Province (also spelled Nuristan) is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. ... Nimruz province is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. ... Panjshir is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. ...

The total number of candidates for the provincial councils is 3,025. Each province except Oruzgan had women running for seats in the provincial council. Female candidates are running for parliament in all districts. District council elections, originally also scheduled for this date, will not be held in 2005 (district numbers, boundaries and population figures have to be determined first). Oruzgan province is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan. ...

These were the first elections in Afghanistan in 33 years: after communist rule, civil war and Taliban rule, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan toppled the Taliban regime and after the presidential elections in 2004, parliamentary elections were organized in 2005. Originally, according to the 2001 Bonn agreement, the elections were to be held in June 2004. However, due to the security situation, Hamid Karzai, then interim president (now president) of Afghanistan, moved the elections more than a year to the later date. Security is still an issue, as Taliban and others threatened to disrupt the elections violently. Several candidates were killed before polling. This article gives information on election and election results in Afghanistan. ... An election to the office of President of Afghanistan was held on October 9, 2004. ... 2004 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December See also: June 2004 in sports Deaths in June • 28 Anthony Buckeridge • 26 Naomi Shemer • 26 Yash Johar • 22 Bob Bemer • 22 Thomas Gold • 22 Francisco Ortiz Franco • 16 Thanom Kittikachorn • 10 Ray Charles • 5 Ronald Reagan... Hamid Karzai, (Pushtu: حامد کرزي Dari: حامد کرزی) (born December 24, 1957) is the current and first democratically elected President of Afghanistan (since December 7, 2004). ... The President of Afghanistan is Afghanistans Head of State. ...

An Afghan man casts his ballot at a polling station in Lash Kar Gah, Helmand Province, September 18, 2005. Polling stations were busy, but orderly, across the city.

A quarter of the seats - 68 seats - in the parliament are reserved for women, as well as 10 seats for the Kuchi community. Those are minimum numbers: there is no maximum for the number of seats for those groups. The 102 members of the Meshrano Jirga, the upper house, are indirectly elected by the provincial councils. Image File history File links Afghan_elections_2005. ... Image File history File links Afghan_elections_2005. ... Kuchis are an ethnic group of nomads in Afghanistan. ... The House of Elders, also natively known as the Meshrano Jirga is the upper house of the bicameral national assembly of Afghanistan. ...

Sources and further reading

• Joint Electoral Management Body. Election results by province can be found here.
• Drei Frauen im afghanischen Wahlkampf, in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 15 September 2005
• Electionworld: elections in Afghanistan. Retrieved September 16, 2005.
• BBC Afghanistan election guide. Retrieved September 17, 2005.
• Candidate statistics. Retrieved September 17, 2005
• Radio Free Europe/azadiradio: Afghanistan Votes. Retrieved September 29, 2005