Dear Mr. President: please stop Afghan adultery

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan poll workers made an unusual discovery among ballot papers from Thursday's election -- a hand-written plea from a woman asking the president to do something about her unfaithful husband.

The note to President Hamid Karzai, written in blue pen on a sheet of lined note-paper, was found tucked among voting slips in ballot boxes at a polling station in a small school in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

"With warm greetings to the president," it began.

"I am a woman whose husband disappears during the day every day and wanders around the town and through parks with different types of women, while my children and I sit at home hungry, waiting for him," it read.

The unidentified woman accused her husband of ignoring his family and of taking all their money for himself.

"I want to ask you, Mr. President, to notice how much adultery there is among men," the letter read.

"I don't know the right language to tell you, I'm asking you to please get rid of this, for all the hatred and damage it brings upon families."

Sanbileh-jan, head of the team of electoral officers at the polling station, folded up the note and put it in her pocket.

She said she didn't know what to do with it, but was pretty sure that it would not reach Karzai's inbox.

(Editing by Paul Tait)