Kabul ? Mubaruz Khan didn’t bother to vote when Afghans went to the polls in the country’s second-ever democratic election last month. He was too busy eking out a living selling cigarettes and soda for $3 a day, and didn’t think voting would make a difference in his life.

Millions like Khan stayed home on Aug. 20, a sharp contrast to 2004, when Afghans jammed polling stations to give President Hamid Karzai his first term. Ominous warnings from the Taliban suppressed turnout, but some Afghans said they were also discouraged by the government’s failure to halt endemic corruption, spiraling unemployment and crumbling security.

“We want peace. We want security. We want job opportunities,” the 55-year-old Khan said Monday. “Otherwise, the democracy and the elections that they are all shouting about every day mean nothing to us.”

Nearly a month after Afghanistan voted, the election’s messy aftermath has exposed the difficulties of installing a Western-style democracy in a land that has never seen one — and raised questions over whether an electoral system can take root eight years after the U.S.-led invasion that ended Taliban’s radical Islamist rule.

The country’s election commission originally hoped to declare a certified winner this week, but claims of ballot-stuffing and phantom voters have pushed that timeline back weeks, if not months, leaving the country in political limbo at a time the Taliban is unleashing a record number of attacks. Thousands of fake ballots were submitted across the country, and many returns showed Karzai winning 100 percent of the vote in some districts.

The latest partial count has Karzai leading with 54 percent to leading challenger Abdullah Abdullah’s 28 percent, and a full count was expected later this week. If enough votes are eliminated for fraud complaints, Karzai’s tally could fall below the 50-percent threshold, forcing a two-man runoff.

In a country dominated by tribal and ethnic loyalties — and scarred by years of civil war and Taliban rule — it’s not yet clear if democracy will take hold.

President Barack Obama has made Afghanistan the Pentagon’s No. 1 priority after the Bush administration for years poured most of its resources into Iraq.

But as the U.S. considers sending thousands more troops into the country to counter rising Taliban violence, American political leaders are wondering whether creating Western-style democracy should be among their goals.

“I do not believe we can build a democratic state in Afghanistan,” Sen. Diane Feinstein, a Democrat from California, told CNN on Sunday. She said American troops in the country should focus on preventing the Taliban from returning to power.