A Sept. 18 poll for the lower house of parliament, or wolesi jirga, went ahead despite a Taleban threat to disrupt it but already close to a quarter of the votes have been disqualified by the Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC).

The credibility of the vote will weigh heavily when US President Barack Obama reviews his Afghanistan war strategy in December amid rising violence and sagging public support. It will also likely be discussed at a NATO summit in Lisbon this month.

“We have assigned three prosecutors to investigate staff of the election commission over allegations of fraud, based on complaints from candidates,” Deputy Attorney General Rahmatullah Nazari told Reuters.

Rahmatullah said a letter had been sent to the commission informing them of the investigation. The IEC could not be reached immediately on Wednesday for comment.

On Tuesday, scores of disgruntled lawmakers, candidates and their supporters demonstrated in Kabul, calling for the election to be scrapped amid allegations that IEC officials had been involved in fraud.

The protesters took to the streets for a second day on Wednesday, and said they planned to hold further rallies.

“We were the same numbers as Tuesday and we plan a bigger protest in Kabul on Sunday,” Daoud Sultanzoy, a prominent member of parliament from Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, told Reuters, adding he planned to visit the Attorney General later on Wednesday.

“Most participants are adamant about calling for a new election. I personally a.m. waiting to see whether the commission is willing to correct its mistakes. If they don’t address these, then this will lead to a need for a new election,” he said.

Preliminary results were announced following delays last month while the election body recounted votes from hundreds of polling sites.

Final results, which were due at the end of last month, have been pushed back while a separate, UN-backed election watchdog sifts through thousands of complaints and decides whether to invalidate more votes.

While thousands of formal and informal complaints have been pouring in since polling day, there had until this week been few calls for the ballot to be held again.

Western nations have been wary of following Afghan officials in dubbing the election a success after the fiasco of last year’s fraud-marred presidential ballot. The top UN envoy in Afghanistan said last month “considerable fraud” had taken place. The IEC, which was also accused of fraud in last year’s presidential poll, was given more powers this year, including the ability to disqualify votes on its own.

The UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) cannot investigate or adjudicate on ballots already thrown out by the IEC, including ballots over which complaints have been lodged.

Sultanzoy, who according to preliminary results will not be re-elected, said most of his votes had been thrown out unfairly by the IEC, and the complaints watchdog should have the power to investigate ballots already disqualified by the IEC.

On Tuesday the ECC said it had received more than 6,000 complaints, about 2,000 of which could affect the outcome.