Afghanistan's Imperfect Election
The two main contenders jockeying for presidency, the incumbent President Hamid Karzai and the former foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah have both accused each other of vote rigging.
Just over 17 percent of the votes have been counted showing Karzai with 42.3 percent and Abdullah on 33.1 percent.
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But the Election Complaints Commission received nearly 800 allegations of fraud on polling day alone. Over 40 were serious enough to affect the outcome of the vote and required immediate investigation.
On top of that, the people counting the ballots are viewed as less than independent. The members of the Independent Election Commission were hand picked by President Karzai.
And now as partial results drip-feed in, Afghans are left to await the announcement of the winner. On the streets of Kabul, it's become a guessing game of what will happen next and speculation is certainly an art form to Afghans.
Ahmad, a tailor, suggested the next step should be to divide the country in half: North and South. "Abdullah can have the North, Karzai the South," he said, roughly splitting the country along tribal lines.
Though I pointed out the creation of Pakistan in 1948 lead to a bloodbath along the India-Pakistan border, he simply shrugged and said, "we are used to death."
I asked an Afghan woman if there was evidence of serious vote-rigging would Afghans protest? The woman, who wouldn't give her name, seemed bemused, she told me she didn't vote and she felt protesting would be as useless as voting itself.
Hopelessness is the most dangerous outcome to this election. Many in the international community want Afghans to believe in the democractic process, anything else would make a mockery of 5 million Afghans who risked their lives to go out and vote.