Voter Fraud in Afghanistan -- AfPax Launches

My friend Eason Jordan’s new site has launched: AfPax Insider. And it’s got a doozy of a story on it.

Kabul – Brit­ney Spears is unwit­tingly pro­vid­ing the lat­est evi­dence that the com­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in Afghanistan are shap­ing up to be tainted by mas­sive voter and vote-counting fraud.

The “Oops!… I Did It Again” Amer­i­can pop star is among mil­lions of sup­posed Afghan cit­i­zens newly reg­is­tered to vote in the August 20 elections.

Yup. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of usable — and fraud­u­lent — voter reg­is­tra­tion cards are avail­able on the Afghan black mar­ket for as lit­tle as $1 each, throw­ing the integrity of the vote into ques­tion two months before a sin­gle bal­lot is cast. Some joker in Khan­da­har decided Spears would make a good voter in the upcom­ing election.

“Dis­mayed offi­cials, can­di­dates, and experts say the impro­pri­eties and fears of related bal­lot box stuff­ing have height­ened wor­ries about whether the elec­tions and their results will be viewed as legit­i­mate.” … Which we can all agree on is not some­thing Afghanistan needs these days.

AfPax is the brain­child of for­mer CNN Chief News Exec­u­tive Eason Jor­dan, who also runs IraqSlogger.com, a site ded­i­cated to insider news about Iraq. (Full dis­clo­sure: Eason’s a friend and I used to work for him at IraqS­log­ger.) Yes­ter­day marked its launch and I wish him the absolute best on this.