Politics
War on Voters: Pattan’s Audit & Analysis Report on Pakistan General Elections 2024
Pattan audit report on Pakistan GE 2024 exposes the scale of election rigging during Elections 2024. We have summarized the key findings of the report.
The Constitution of Pakistan upholds the separation of powers as a fundamental pillar of the State, ensuring the fair dispensation of justice. Conducting free, fair, and transparent elections under Article 218 is a constitutional duty of the State. Unsurprisingly, this principle is also embedded in the Preamble of Pakistan’s Constitution:
The State shall exercise its powers and authority through the chosen representatives of the people”
However, practically, this does not happen. It has never happened in the bleak political history of Pakistan, and in Pakistan General Elections 2024, this clause of the Constitution, as well as several others, was flagrantly violated by the state and its institutions.
The General Elections 2024 were marred by irregularities and injustice, and the state authorities blatantly attempted to push the country’s largest political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), out of contention.
While the disregard of the public mandate after the elections has been very well documented by PTI, as well as our team at Bahaaristan, Pattan has now published a detailed and damning report that exposes the scale of election rigging during the General Elections 2024. We have summarized the key findings of the Pattan’s report in this article.
Summary of the Pattan’s Report: Pakistan Elections 2024
“In GE-2024, the ECP, the pliant judges and the establishment crossed almost every red line of the Constitution, the Elections Act 2017, the Elections Rules and the ECP’s own Guiding Principles/values. It has not only eroded the public trust in and respect for the institutions but also built an unprecedented resistance movement against the military establishment and its beneficiaries. We at PATTAN-Coalition38 are convinced that the General Elections 2024 were rigged holistically, comprehensively, aggressively and brazenly at every step of the electoral process.”
Pattan has pointed out in its audit report the 4 Strategic Ds adopted by Pakistan’s state institutions to rig the General Elections 2024:
1. Delay:
- Population census for 5 months
- Delimitation of constituencies
- Verdict on PTI’s internal party election petition
- Provincial elections in Punjab and KP by 8 months
- General elections by 5 months
- Election results for weeks
- Verdict of higher judiciary
- Cases in election tribunals
- Lower government elections
2. Deny
- Access to internet & cellular services
- Election symbol
- PTI’s share in reserved seats
- Reserved seats to women and minorities
- Election campaign
- Level playing field
- Filing & acceptance of nomination papers
- Access to polling agents to polling stations
- Result forms
3. Detain
- Opposition party leaders
- Abduction of family members of politicians, MPs, journalists and social media & political activists
- Opposition candidates
- Covering candidates
- Social media activists
- Reporters and human rights activists
- Candidates’ supporters
- Polling agents
4. Destroy
- Constitution’s spirit
- Independence of judiciary, media & civil society
- Original ballot papers
- Original form 45s & 46s
- The democratic process
- Trust in the impartiality of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP)
- Trust in political parties
- Trust in the system
- Trust in democracy
Innovation – in rigging: Pakistan GE 2024
While election rigging has been a common theme in all of Pakistan’s elections historically, the 2024 GE took it to the next level.
According to Pattan, 64 new election rigging methods were introduced in Pakistan’s General Elections 2024.
Pre-poll rigging: 26
Election day rigging: 10
Post-election rigging: 28
Delays and disenfranchisement of voters: Pakistan General Elections 2024
‘Delays’ was another strategy adopted by the Pakistani state: delay of provincial elections, delay in general elections, delay in population census, delay in delimitation of constituencies, and so on.
In addition to violating the constitution and deliberately skirting the Supreme Court judgement on the elections, the ECP also disenfranchised millions of voters.
According to Pattan, “By mid-August 2023, the Election Commission announced updated voters’ lists and promised to complete the delimitation process within four months. This implied that polls would not be held within the stipulated 90-day period—effectively defying the Supreme Court’s orders. In essence, a clause of the Elections Act would override an Article of the Constitution.
The Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) stated, “The primary constitutional responsibility of the ECP is to ensure genuine representation in the voters’ lists.”
This came just as Caretaker governments had been established.
The ECP’s persistent delays in completing the census had a clear purpose: the handpicked federal and provincial administrations would implement the military establishment’s orders without question.”
While we are evaluating the effects of the delays, we should also analyze the effect of the new census on voters’ registration.
According to the 7th Census, Pakistan’s population in August 2023 was recorded at 241.5 million. Data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) indicated that approximately 58% of the population, or 140.08 million people, were likely to be 18 or older at the time.
By December 2023, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) had registered 128.58 million voters—roughly 53% of the total population. This means that for the 2024 general elections, around 11.5 million eligible voters—roughly 5% of the adult population—were left disenfranchised.
Notably, the vast majority of unregistered voters were women. Of the 11.5 million disenfranchised individuals, 9.94 million were women, while 1.56 million were men.
Discrepancies, variance and differences in Form 47 data uploaded by ECP: Pakistan GE 2024
One of the key findings from Pattan’s audit of electoral results published by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) was the significant variation in voter turnout between the National Assembly (NA) and Provincial Assemblies (PA). These discrepancies were driven by:
- Fake additions to voter counts,
- Retraction of valid votes or a combination of both in statements of vote counts and ballot paper accounts, and
- The mass rejection of validly cast votes.
In most cases, there was an almost perfect correlation between the victory margins of favoured candidates and the number of fake or rejected votes. This blatant fraud was executed through Form-47 during the preparation of provisional election results, followed by large-scale reverse-engineering to fabricate Form-45 and Form-46 before the official results were published. As a result, severe discrepancies emerged in voter turnout figures at the national and provincial levels, as well as inconsistencies between the vote count, ballot paper accounts, victory margins, and rejected votes.
PATTAN’s audit and analysis report reveals that the actual voter turnout was significantly lower than the reported 48% cited by some election observers and media groups. To date (Feb 15, 2025), the ECP has failed to announce disaggregated turnout figures or disclose the share of polled votes received by each contesting political party.
It is worth noting that Pattan is using ECP’s data in its election report for the sake of audit. As per their estimate, between 2-3 million fake votes were added by the authorities on Form 47s.
Rejected votes: Pakistan Elections 2024
There were 30 seats where the margin of victory was less than rejected votes. Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) won 17 of these, followed by Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) with 6.
Women voters: Pakistan General Elections 2024
Earlier, we discussed how women were systematically put at a disadvantage during Pakistan GE 2024 as over 9.9 million eligible female voters were not registered by the ECP.
However, it must further be noted that strange voting patterns were observed in the ECP-issued Form 47s.
As per the data in ECP-issued Form 47s, 421 female polling stations across 70 constituencies had zero or up to 50 polled votes in GE 2024.
The Elections Act 2017, Section 9 instructs the ECP to make sure that women are not denied access to voting. It says, “If the turnout of women voters is less than ten percent of the total votes polled in a constituency, the Commission may presume that the women voters have been restrained through an agreement from casting their votes and may declare, polling at one or more polling stations or election in the whole constituency, void.”
Conclusion: Pattan Audit Report on Pakistan General Elections 2024
Pattan’s report on Pakistan’s General Elections has unmasked the truth behind the ‘mother of electoral fraud.’
The points noted in this article were just a few. Read the complete report by Pattan to understand the scale of electoral fraud in 2024 Pakistan elections.
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