104% of Afghanistan people registered to vote

http://www.bouldernews.com/bdc/opinion_columnists/article/0,1713,BDC_2490_3159971,00.html



Brauchli: Democracy, Afghanistan style
September 4, 2004

Now that both conventions are over we can start focusing on Nov. 2, the day when a new president of the United States is elected. That is a momentous day and one to which we all look forward.

Given the events of 2000, nothing is of greater concern to the citizenry than that this election be unblemished by the sorts of irregularities that caused the president in the last election to be selected by nine people in black robes. To see how a true democracy runs elections and get ideas on how to run ours in 2004, we turn to Afghanistan, a country we recently helped blow up and are now helping rebuild (insofar as there is any money left over after taking into account the cost of conquering Iraq.) Its presidential election is scheduled for Oct. 9 and it looks as though it is going to succeed beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

On Aug. 17, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan reported to the Security Council that more than 9.9 million Afghans had registered to vote, a fact that both the Afghan government and the United States hailed as a demonstration of democracy in action in a country where only a short time before there had been real question as to whether or not a successful election could be held. When the election date was first announced there was concern that the Taliban would intimidate would-be voters and that conservatives would discourage women from registering to vote. Although only 42 percent of eligible women have registered, the high registration numbers among men demonstrate that the Taliban was unable to prevent male citizens from registering.

The enthusiasm over the success of the Afghan experiment in democracy was not dampened when it was pointed out that the 9.9 million registered voters came out of a voting population estimated to contain 9.5 million people.

More at link:
http://www.bouldernews.com/bdc/opinion_columnists/article/0,1713,BDC_2490_3159971,00.html

104%? Sounds like Republican voter registration, Texas-style.