Spreading Democracy

[Trigger warning for violence]

Taliban threaten to decapitate, dismember Afghan voters marked by anti-fraud ink:
To get their hands on ballots in Thursday's election, Afghans will first have to dip their thumbs in indelible ink.

It's meant to ensure each voter gets just one vote, but some Afghans are worried that it will make them easy targets for the Taliban, who have warned voters to stay away from the polls.
Election commission officials insist the ink is necessary because washable ink in a previous election "prompt[ed] all 15 failed candidates to demand the election results be nullified," but the indelible ink was used during Iran's last election, and we all remember how successfully that totes prevented allegations of election fraud.

So the insistence on the ink is effectively risking voters' lives for no reason.

Meanwhile, if the Afghan government is really so goddamned interested in preventing election-related protests, maybe they ought to stop passing heinously misogynistic politically-motivated laws just ahead of elections.

What the hell are we doing over there? Sob.

[H/T to CaitieCat.]

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