ELECTION WATCHDOGS 5/30/17 11:29 AM As the IEC did not anticipate the possibility of a comprehensive, nationwide audit, no contingency plans were available to conduct such an exercise. The audit process was suspended multiple times amid allegations by Abdullah Abdullah that the agreed-upon audit criteria were not being followed (Stancati and Khan Totalkhil 2014). However, the E.U.’s final report on the election places part of the blame for the vagueness of the audit procedures on the contestants themselves, as the candidate teams played “a central role in the design of the audit procedures” (European Union Election Assessment Team 2014) and their continued discussions after coming to their initial agreement “diminished the constancy and clarity of the exercise” ( European Union Election Assessment Team 2014). Without predetermined audit standards, the candidates could continue to argue (sometimes violently) for more favorable standards, ultimately slowing and undermining the process further. The July 12 agreement mandated a rapid start to the massive audit undertaking. As a result, rules were not agreed or publicized ahead of the audit. Instead, they were developed incrementally by an Audit Committee and the IEC throughout the process, which led to confusion for the auditing staff and observers, and left the process vulnerable to criticism (European Union Election Assessment Team 2014). Procedures were ultimately driven in large part by the candidate teams. While consultation is important, it is equally critical that political actors do not dictate regulations and procedures (which should be developed by electoral bodies that have a legislative mandate to do so). July 30, thirteen days after the audit began, marked a turning point, as the candidates endorsed detailed audit procedures and an IEC decision defined the “criteria leading to recounts and to partial and total invalidations” (European Union Election Assessment Team 2014). Still, although criteria were changed midway through the audit and daily clarifications were issued by the Audit Committee, prior audit decisions were not revisited in light of this new information. Accordingly, not all evidence was treated the same. The key document guiding the auditors was a 16-point checklist determined in the July 12 agreement. However, additional regulations, procedures and training were needed to guide auditors in completing the checklist, in order to reduce subjectivity and ensure uniformity. For example, question 12 of the IEC checklist asked: “Are there identical or significant patterns of the same markings on ballots? If yes, how many?”(Clark and Suroush 2014). Further guidance and training was important for individual auditors to uniformly identify similarly marked ballot (SMB) papers, as well as to understand what constituted a pattern. The training that was provided to audit investigators, however, was extremely limited and rudimentary. In addition, while an audit is by definition meant to address wider issues of fraud and intimidation, the audit investigation in Afghanistan was narrowly focused on the invalidation of ballot boxes. An ‘investigations committee’ established by the IECC to address these wider issues was itself fraught with procedural issues and came well after the election and audit, when the opportunity to address fraud and rebuild public trust had passed. 12