Commission Chairman Grant Kippen said that one of the candidates was disqualified for having links to illegal armed groups, while the other two had failed to resign from their government positions before running for office, as required by law.

The disqualified candidates are from Badakhshan, Kandahar, and Oruzgan provinces. According to Kippen, about 1,200 of the approximately 6,000 complaints his commission has received were registered after election day and include reports of attempts to intimidate candidates and irregularities in the vote-counting process.

While Kippen upheld the integrity of the vote-counting process, he promised that his office will seriously investigate all complaints received. AT

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