OAK BLUFFS, Mass. A little more than 24 hours after the polls closed, President Barack Obama stepped out on the White House South Lawn last week to pronounce the Afghanistan presidential elections something of a success.

But now, as reports mount of widespread fraud in the balloting, including allegations that supporters of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, illegally stuffed ballot boxes in the south and ripped up ballots cast for his opponents, Obamas early praise for the Afghan elections may soon come back to haunt him.

Afghanistans Electoral Complaints Commission said Friday that it had received more than 2,000 complaints of fraud or abuse in last weeks election, with 270 of them serious enough to potentially change the outcome. Karzais biggest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, showed reporters video of a local election chief in one polling station stuffing ballot boxes himself.

The vote count has progressed slowly as of Friday, preliminary results with 17 percent of the vote in gave Karzai 44 percent and Abdullah 35 percent. If no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote, a runoff must be conducted.

For Obama, who is on vacation in Marthas Vineyard, and his administration, it is, in many ways, the worst of all possible outcomes. Administration officials have made no secret of their growing disenchantment with Karzai.

But Karzai has managed to turn that disenchantment to an advantage, painting himself at home as the only political candidate willing to stand up to the dictates of the United States, according to Western officials.

Administration officials said that initial characterizations of the success of the elections referred solely to the fact that they took place at all, despite threats by the Taliban and more than 200 rocket attacks in southern Afghanistan on election day.

Publicly, the administration line remains that Obama is waiting for the Afghan complaints commission to rule on the validity of the vote tallies and on less numerous fraud allegations lodged against Abdullah. The process may take weeks.

The allegations of fraud are very serious, throughout the country, and the international community has an obligation to ensure that the complaints commission investigates all of these complaints, said Saad Mohseni, head of the Moby media group of radio and television stations based in Kabul.

We had rockets raining on some towns, suicide bombers in the cities, gunfire, and yet people turned out to vote, Mohseni said. People took their lives in their hands, and therefore they deserve better.