Election commission chairman Fazel Ahmad Manawi says about 1.3 million votes were disqualified out of 5.6 million. That means about 23 percent of ballots were discarded because of ballot-box stuffing or re-jiggered totals.

Election officials called the vote a success because they were able to catch the fraud, but the number of fraudulent ballots also indicates that cheating was pervasive in a vote that many hoped would show the government's commitment to reform.

It was not immediately clear what the results released Wednesday would mean for the makeup of the 249-member parliament.