There were 272 national and 577 provincial assembly constituencies, A total of 811,491 staff were deployed for election duties as presiding officers, assistant presiding officers, and polling officers, in addition to 371,000 armed forces personnel who provided security duties alongside police and other law enforcement agencies. There were 85,317 polling stations set up, comprising over 242,000 polling booths.
Violence Several violent incidents took place in the month of July in the run up to the general election. In the beginning of the month, bombing targeted the PTI candidate for
NA-48 (Tribal Area-IX), and the
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal's candidate in the Takhti Khel area of the
Bannu. On 10 July, a
suicide bombing by
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) killed 20 people and injured 63 at an
Awami National Party (ANP) rally in
Peshawar. As the bombing killed ANP provincial candidate Haroon Bilour, the elections for
Constituency PK-78 were postponed by the Election Commission. On 12 July, one political staff was killed in Peshawar, while two
BAP staff were injured in
Khuzdar. On 13 July,
twin bombings by
ISIS-K in
Mastung and
Bannu left 154 people dead and 220 injured. The bombings targeted
JUI-F candidate
Akram Khan Durrani,
BAP candidate for the
Nawabzada Siraj Raisani. On 22 July, the PTI candidate for constituency PK-99,
Ikramullah Gandapur, was killed in
a bombing near of
Dera Ismail Khan. The same day, Akram Khan Durrani survived a second assassination attempt. On 24 July, three
Pakistani Army soldiers and a civilian were killed in
Kech District, Balochistan. Several violent incidents took place on election day. A
bombing in Quetta killed 31 and injured 35. In Swabi, a clash between PTI and ANI supporters left one dead and three injured. Another three were injured in a grenade attack outside a polling station in
Larkana, while a man was shot dead in a political clash in
Khanewal. Several more people were injured in 7 other incidents.
Allegations of election meddling Pre-poll There have been allegations by some international journalists and scholars, claiming that there was a plan between judiciary and military bodies to influence the outcome of the election. It was suggested that alleged goal of these attempts was to halt the party of Nawaz Sharif from coming into power and to bring the results in favor of PTI, so that Imran Khan – who is alleged as close to the military – can be installed as the prime minister. There have been claims of PML (N)'s campaign material being ripped apart by authorities while leaving alone material belonging to PTI. There have been suggestions that candidates belonging to PML (N) have been coerced by
ISI to switch to those parties whose future government can be better controlled by military. On the last day of scrutiny of nomination papers, seven PML (N) candidates from Southern Punjab returned their tickets leaving no option for PML (N) to field replacement candidates, depriving them an opportunity to win those seats. There have also been reports of election engineering by army and intelligence agencies in Balochistan province in favor of Balochistan Awami Party. Reports further suggested that there was evidence of collusion between the judiciary and military, in that two military officials were appointed to the Joint Investigation Team to investigate corruption allegations against former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, which were further strengthened by the circumstances of the Avenfield case verdict against the Sharifs. However, he provided no evidence and was at the time facing corruption and misconduct charges pending at the
Supreme Judicial Council, leading to rumours about the timing of his statement. Pakistan's Chief Justice
Saqib Nisar said he felt "saddened" at Siddiqui's comments, and whilst criticising them, stated that "as the head of judiciary, I assure you that we are not under any sort of pressure". An official from the
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan stated that "The level of army interference and political engineering is unprecedented." Another institution, the National Accountability Bureau has been described as being used by military intelligence agencies, including ISI, to bring politicians in line by threatening to bring corruption cases against them. Due to interference by military and intelligence agencies,
The Financial Times described these elections as "the dirtiest in years". Furthermore, the EU observer mission released their report after the election stating that there were "systematic attempts to undermine the ruling party", "lack of equality of opportunity", pressure on the media, far stronger efforts than usual to encourage switching parties and judicial conduct had all negatively influenced the vote.
Raza Rabbani also leveled the same allegations including the Election Commission of Pakistan, National Accountability Bureau and security agencies as the culprit behind pre-poll rigging.
Election day The election results were scheduled to be released 2am the next day; however, this was delayed due to glitches in "Results Transmission System" (RTS), an Android and iPhone-based app that was to be used for sending results from 85,000 polling stations to the ECP headquarters.
Xinhua reported that during the RTS breakdown, PTI was leading in 108 National Assembly seats, later final results issued by the election commission showed that PTI had won 116 seats. The system was initially running smoothly but started to malfunction when the results started pouring in large numbers. Some alleged the delays were due to a "conspiracy". Almost all political parties, with the exception of PTI, have alleged large scale election day rigging. The winning PTI have alleged rigging in some constituencies as well. The fairness of the election was also criticized due to the Election Commission's failure to provide Form 45s, official forms which include the tally of votes and are prepared in the presence of political agents of all the candidates. Party leaders alleged that their representatives were barred from polling stations before counting began and the Form 45s were prepared in their absence and behind closed doors. There was also an incident of seven people being arrested for alleged vote rigging in
Karachi. According to
FAFEN observer Sarwar Bari, "Only one polling agent of every party is allowed when Form 45 is given out by the polling staff, so we can't rule out the fact that it could be a misunderstanding." Chairman of winning party
Imran Khan pledged that he will allow to open any constituency his opponents think are rigged, he said that opposition has full right into recounting or accountability over election process to ensure transparency. The
Free and Fair Election Network, an election watchdog, said the 2018 polls were "more transparent" in some aspects than the previous elections and that "significant improvements in the quality of critical electoral processes" inspired "greater public confidence". According to former Indian Chief Election Commissioner
S. Y. Quraishi, a member of the international observers group in Pakistan, the election system was transparent, free and fair, and the minor technical glitches which showed up later in the day were due to inexperience. On 12 August 2018, it was reported that 90% of Form-45s were not signed by any polling agent, which is a violation of Election Act 2017. However, an ECP spokesperson clarified the discrepancy by stating that there was no designated space on the Form-45s to obtain the signatures of polling agents. The signatures were instead done on tamper-evident bags that were used to transport the results. For the transparency reasons and to combat controversy surrounding form 45, election commission of Pakistan published all form 45 publicly on their website. ==Results==