Nearly one-quarter of the ballots cast in parliamentary elections held last month in Afghanistan have been thrown out because of fraud. Remarkably, that is a good thing. While the scale of the attempt to manipulate the elections is depressing, the fact that election officials still take their jobs seriously is a reason for hope. Not all of Afghanistan has reconciled itself to systemic corruption.
Fraud is becoming a fact of life in Afghan elections. In last year's presidential ballot, officials turned a blind eye to widespread fraud, the bulk of it to help President Hamid Karzai avoid a runoff vote. Only vigorous international condemnation forced election monitors to do their jobs, throw out nearly a million ballots, and hold the second round of voting, which Mr. Karzai eventually won.
That experience plainly influenced officials monitoring the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections. This time, the election commission disqualified 1.3 million ballots out of 5.6 million cast — 23 percent — because they came from voting stations that never opened or because returned tallies matched exactly the number of registered voters, or because 100 percent of votes were for one candidate, or the ballots were split precisely among candidates. Nor is the election commission's work complete: Another 2,000 complaints remain to be heard.