Explanations based upon deep drivers in each society highlight the dangers of attempting to organize elections under a wide range of challenging conditions, including in poor and illiterate societies with scattered rural populations lacking access to modern communications and transportation, in deeply divided states emerging from years of conflict, and in countries with a long legacy of authoritarian rule and little, if any, experience of democratic practices.

The severe risks associated with attempting to hold popular contests that meet international standards of electoral integrity under the most difficult circumstances are perhaps best illustrated by contemporary events in Afghanistan. Successive elections for the presidency, lower house of parliament (the Wolesi Jirga), and provincial councils have been held in this country since 2004 despite a traditional political culture with tribal allegiances and rival forms of regional authority and elite patronage rooted in semifeudalism, poor communications and transportation infrastructure over a vast territory, low levels of literacy and schooling (with the 2013 UNDP Human Development Index ranking Afghanistan 175th lowest out of 186 countries worldwide, and second from the bottom in terms of the Gender Inequality Index), a murky politics characterized by endemic corruption and violence, and weakly institutionalized political parties, among peoples who have lived under violent conflict for decades. In 2009, widespread complaints about ballot stuffing led the Independent Election Commission to organize a complete recount. The second round of the 2014 Presidential elections saw more than 150 reported incidents of violence on polling day and, in the aftermath, the leading presidential contender, Abdullah Abdullah, demanded that the independent electoral commission should cease the count midway through due to alleged irregularities, an event followed by mass protests, the resignation of the chief commissioner, and delays in announcing the results. The results of the audit suggest that perhaps as many as 2 million fraudulent votes were cast out of 8 million in total. In the end, a brokered power-sharing agreement resolved the outcome but this also violated the spirit of the election. A detailed study of the Afghan experience over successive elections since 2004 concluded that the process strengthened the power of ruling elites but did little to develop representative democracy.