In the general elections of 8 February 2024 (GE-2024), 32 of 265 contested National Assembly (NA) constituencies returned results where the number of rejected ballots exceeded the margin of victory between the winning candidate and the runner-up. This represents 12 percent of all contested NA seats. In the general elections of 2018 (GE-2018), the equivalent figure was 49 of 272 constituencies — 18 percent of contested seats.
What Is the Margin of Victory?
The margin of victory is the numerical difference between the votes secured by the winning candidate and the votes secured by the candidate who finished second. It is the gap that separates a seat won from a seat lost. In closely contested constituencies, this margin may be a few hundred — or even a few dozen — votes.
What Are Rejected Ballots?
A rejected ballot is a ballot paper excluded from the vote count. Polling staff identify and set aside such ballots during the counting process at the polling station. The Returning Officer (RO) then reviews these determinations during the consolidation of results, and the ballot is formally rejected only after that scrutiny. Pakistani electoral procedure specifies four grounds for rejection: the ballot does not bear the presiding officer’s official stamp and signature; it carries any mark or writing beyond the Assistant Presiding Officer’s (APO) official seal and signature; an extraneous paper or material is attached to it; or the voting mark falls simultaneously in the boxes of two candidates in a way that makes it impossible to determine which candidate the voter intended to select.
Rejection does not automatically indicate fraud or deliberate misconduct. Voter error — including accidental double-marking or stamps placed outside the designated box — accounts for a documented share of rejections in every election.
What the Numbers Show
The reduction of 17 constituencies between GE-2018 and GE-2024 — from 18 percent to 12 percent of contested NA seats — represents a measurable change across two electoral cycles. In GE-2018, nearly one in five contested NA constituencies recorded rejected ballots that exceeded the winning margin. By GE-2024, that proportion had fallen to approximately one in eight.
What the Numbers Do Not Establish
The reduction does not, on its own, explain what drove the change. Whether the decline reflects improvements in voter education, modifications to ballot paper design, changes in polling station practice, or a combination of factors requires constituency-level analysis. Similarly, the 32 constituencies that continue to record rejected ballots above the winning margin warrant individual examination — of the grounds on which ballots were rejected, the consistency of invalidation across polling stations within each constituency, and whether rejection rates fell within the normal range for that constituency and election. The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) may use its powers under Section 8(b) of the Elections Act, 2017 to conduct such an exercise, which could inform its future voter education campaigns and highlight any unique patterns of rejection with a bearing on election outcomes. FAFEN’s constituency-level data series, drawing on Form 49 records, is intended to support precisely that analysis.
