Saturday, December 29, 2007

Election mischief?

I had to wonder at the choice of the term "election mischief" when reading this New York Times piece, since it really appears it would be more appropriate to call it "election fraud":

According to Kenya’s election commission, which is considered somewhat independent from the government, at least three areas from Mr. Kibaki’s stronghold of central Kenya reported suspiciously high numbers. In one area, Mr. Kibaki received 105,000 votes, even though there were only 70,000 registered voters. In another, the vote tally was changed, at the last minute, to give the president an extra 60,000 votes. In a third area, the turnout was reported at 98 percent.

When you go further into the article it's even more clear this is not "mischief":

The head of the European Union’s election observer mission said that several election officials in the pro-Kibaki areas of central Kenya had failed to publicly post their voting results, which is against Kenyan law.

“This is something we witnessed ourselves,” said Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, chief of the European delegation. “It’s clearly disturbing.”

The European Union is also investigating the high turnouts in the Kikuyu highlands north of Nairobi, where few have broken ranks with Mr. Kibaki’s party and some areas have voted nearly 100 percent in favor of the president.

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