I thought I'd get this ball rolling since I think the perceived success or failure of the elections (and the legitimacy of the result) will significantly affect operations for the next year and could even be a decisive indicator for our mission in Afghanistan.

The elections are for the Presidency and provincial councils. Although there are 41 candidates for the Presidency, there are only two are likely to win at this point: Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah. Abdullah is interesting because he is half Pashtun and half Tajik, which is both a political blessing and a curse.

The Presidential election is a contest of factional alliances with each candidate vying for blocks of voters. This is particularly true of Karzai, who has pursued a strategy of bringing opposition supporters into his camp through a variety of means of questionable legitimacy (from a western perspective). The polling at this point is very close and it looks like there will likely be a 2nd round with Karzai as the winner, though that is predicated on a number of assumptions.

Although the Presidential election is interesting, I think the provincial elections are more important. These elections fill provincial councils that, in theory, have co-equal power with governors, who are appointed by the President. In practice, however, the councils have little real power and authority beyond filling 2/3 of the upper house of parliament. IMO the Afghan government will need to empower these councils and enable them to fulfill their full constitutional authority. Should the government fail to do that (and I think that's likely for a number of reasons), then the legitimacy of the central government will be further eroded. There is also the possibility of an effect similar to the 2005 elections in Gaza, where voters voted against a corrupt establishment. In Afghanistan there are a number of pro-Taliban and other candidates hostile to Karzai and the US who could conceivably get elected and make it to the upper house.

Disrupting the elections is a key goal for the Taliban in their efforts to delegitimize the government. An election that is perceived as corrupted or otherwise unrepresentative could be a fatal blow to the government and coalition efforts. This is particularly true since the elections are being run solely by an Afghan commission without assistance from the UN, unlike the 2005 elections. So far the Taliban are having significant success, as at least 10 percent of polling places will be closed country-wide and at least 30% in the south, though we will not know for sure until election day (20 August). The signs at this point, however, are not good and if the election turns into a disaster then Gen. McCrystal's new strategy for Afghanistan may be aborted before it gets out of the starting block.

Some additional reading/research material:

CRS Report: Afghanistan: Politics, Government Formation and Performance (PDF file).

AREU Report: Elections in 2009 and 2010: Technical and Contextual Challenges to Building Democracy in Afghanistan (PDF file).

The Analysis Corporation: Afghan Election Primer (PDF file).

For those of you with OSC access there is an excellent Afghanistan Elections pages with some quality analysis and reporting. Here is the link. Those eligible for OSC access can sign up here.