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- dagnabbit, on 06/15/2009, -8/+1086 pages for 6 paragraphs? ***** that.
- sockpuppets, on 06/15/2009, -3/+101
Was Ahmadinejad's Win Rigged?
Iran's Interior Ministry announced Saturday that incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won 63.29% of the vote in the country's presidential election — a landslide. But Iran's opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi says he won and that the result had been rigged; Mousavi supporters have taken to the streets in Tehran and other cities to protest the official outcome.
Ahmadinejad, for his part, insists that he won fairly, while Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, initially congratulated Iranians for proving their "great worth." The result, Khamenei said, was a "divine assessment." On Monday, though, Khamenei ordered the powerful Guardian Council to investigate the fraud allegations.
So far, Washington has taken a cautious approach to commenting on the election, though a senior U.S. official called the results "not credible" and Vice President Joe Biden told Meet the Press that "there's some real doubt" whether Ahmadinejad actually won. "There's an awful lot of questions about how this election was run," he said. Here are five key questions being raised about the legitimacy of the results.
Was the Voting Properly Supervised?
As always in Iran, this election was run by the Interior Ministry. In each ward, ministry and local government officials and respected local leaders form committees to oversee the election process. Iran's powerful Guardian Council appoints thousands of officials to supervise actual voting at polling stations. Candidates can also send an observer to each polling station to watch the voting and ballot count. However, there are no independent election observers in Iran.
Did the Voting go Smoothly?
Not everywhere. On Friday, the polling day, there were reports that opposition observers were barred from entering some voting stations. Mousavi campaign officials also said that a number of stations in the northwest and south had run out of ballots.
The huge numbers of people voting — the government says turnout was more than 80%, one of the highest rates since the Revolution in 1979 — meant that some stations were kept open until late Friday night. Many Iranians, especially those in Tehran, have reported that just before voting ended text-messaging and pro-Mousavi websites were blocked.
Was the Government's Fast Announcement of Results Normal?
No. The Interior Ministry announced the first results within an hour of the polls closing, and the official result less than a day later. The ministry is supposed to wait three days after voting before it certifies the result to allow time for disputes to be examined. Friday's announcement, which was based on a very small count, came just minutes after Mousavi declared himself to be "definitely the winner." According to a Mousavi official in Paris, the opposition leader was initially informed by the Interior Ministry that he had won. But ministry officials shortly thereafter publicly called it for Ahmadinejad.
Gary Sick, a Columbia University professor and Iranian-affairs adviser for three U.S. Administrations, said that given the apparent record turnout, it would have been impossible to announce a definitive result so soon after the polls closed because Iran does not use voting machines. The country uses paper ballots that must be counted by hand — a time-consuming process, Sick said in an interview posted on the Council on Foreign Relations website.
A fast announcement is not necessarily proof of rigging, says John Stremlau, vice president for peace programs at the Carter Center, which has monitored 75 elections over the past two decades. But for people to have confidence in those announcements a country needs an independent electoral commission that acts fairly and transparently. "You have none of that in the case of Iran," says Stremlau.
Are Any of the Vote Totals Suspicious?
Yes. Support for Ahmadinejad was strangely consistent across the country, a real change from previous elections when candidates drew different levels of support in different regions.
There were several other puzzlers in the results:
• According to official figures, Ahmadinejad handily beat Mousavi in Mousavi's hometown of Tabriz — a shocking result given the candidate's popularity in his own region.
• Ahmadinejad beat Mousavi in the big cities, even though Iran's very limited polling and anecdotal evidence indicate that Mousavi is far more popular than the President in cities.
• The official figures put support for the other main reformist candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, at below 1%. That is far less than what was expected, and a drastic departure from the pattern in previous elections.
How Popular Is Ahmadinejad in Iran?
It's possible that the President is simply far more popular than people outside Iran want to believe. There's no doubt that he has won the support of many voters by focusing on Iran's nuclear ambitions and by playing up the perceived threat from Washington and Israel.
At the same time, Iran's economy is a mess, and people are unhappy about a raft of everyday issues, from the price of food to joblessness.
The result is also surprising in light of Iran's demographic trends. There is a lot of evidence that as the country grows younger, it is also growing more moderate. A reform candidate won Iran's presidency with 70% of the vote in 1997, and increased his share to 78% four years later. In 2005, the reform movement had fallen on lean times and many young voters stayed at home; Ahmadinejad squeaked into the presidency in a second round of voting widely seen as having been tampered with. If the results this time are legitimate, it means that two-thirds of Iran's voters have become more conservative over the past four years.
It's also worth noting that big turnouts are often a sign that voters want change and tend to favor the challenger. This time around, by contrast, the incumbent President won two-thirds of the votes cast, according to the government. - Feenix566, on 06/15/2009, -2/+61The fact that the election was rigged should not come as a surprise to anyone. What does come as a surprise is the fact that people are rioting in the streets about it. Apparently the people of Iran feel comfortable enough with their right to free speech that they're willing to openly defy their government. That's a real sign of hope.
- SillyRabbits, on 06/15/2009, -1/+41Well, when the vote counts show that Ahmadinejad won overwhelmingly even in precincts that were his opponent's stronghold, it seems pretty obvious there was widespread fraud. Especially when analysts agreed that Mousavi was likely to win the overall election convincingly. It's bad enough to "nudge" an election one direction or the other, it's entirely different to completely steal it like that - may as well not even bother having them. I don't blame the Iranian people for being outraged.
- gabrielgonzalez, on 06/15/2009, -2/+32Nice comment. Now eff off you prick. Its called knowing about international affairs. What every country does affects us in one way or another you ignorant dickwad.
- techweenie, on 06/15/2009, -4/+30Who do they think they are? Ohio?
- Ryokuchaa, on 06/15/2009, -4/+24Obama did nothing to "rig" the election, won by electoral college; get your facts straight and stop spewing propaganda.
- publiclurker, on 06/15/2009, -2/+19Still scared of those big black guys, huh? Better buy a bigger handgun to compensate.
- CoD4, on 06/15/2009, -5/+21Funny how a theocratic govt is holding a democratic election
- humptyz, on 06/15/2009, -0/+14Wish I had scrolled down and read this first. Six pages for that amount of text is ridiculous.
- CivicTV, on 08/14/2009, -1/+14I have no ***** clue what you just said.
- kingmanic, on 06/15/2009, -0/+12Canada uses machines to register the vote. It's a paper ballot but electronic counting. We also normally only have ~10 million votes to count in a federal election. They had to count and verify 60 million votes.
- CivicTV, on 08/14/2009, -0/+11I'm sure your paper ballots have some sort of bar code or a machine they can be placed into. These are hand counted, ALL OF THEM.
- ZenFountain, on 06/15/2009, -4/+14Iranians...such amateurs at rigging elections.
- vapn420, on 06/15/2009, -5/+15The united states is a place where u can expect such electoral frauds and it would never help in improving the current political scenario (circa 2000).
Hey, at least they are questioning it instead of sitting back and taking it. - pault107, on 06/15/2009, -0/+10en masse*
- GamerXR72, on 06/15/2009, -3/+12I just want to point out that modern technology has made the electoral college obsolete and it should be done away with.
With our ability to instantly transfer data, there is no need for anything more than a popular vote. - vinod1978, on 06/15/2009, -4/+12@fletch512 - Maybe you forgot about the "security guards" in Florida in 2000 that wore uniforms to suggest they were the police and asked for 2 forms of ID from african americans. Not to mention that in 04 Florida had nearly 50,000 names on a list that were felons. If you had the same - or even a similar name as the list - you had to go and get proof you were not that individual - and come back & vote with 2 forms of ID. http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/racism0909.php
Or maybe you forgot about the way how the voter registration papers for young adults were illegally changed which stopped them from voting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQzq86Kkq8w
Or maybe your just a ***** racist. - obreaslan, on 06/15/2009, -2/+10...And the number one reason to Suspect Iran's Election Results:
Pat Buchanan got more votes that Al Gore!!!! - algaeturd, on 06/15/2009, -17/+25Reason 6: They figured that if George Bush can pull off a rigged election with absolutely no challenge, they can probably do it too.
- kingmanic, on 06/15/2009, -0/+82009 Iranian election results brought to you by
Diebold: hand counting.
When you absolutely need a certain election result you need Diebold. - CivicTV, on 08/14/2009, -2/+10And the Iranians are protesting the results in mass.
- kingmanic, on 06/15/2009, -1/+8A hand counted vote of 60 million votes would not return a definitive answer in 2hs nor a fully verified one within a day.
- durruticolumn, on 09/18/2009, -1/+8
Then there's the fact that Ahmadinejad won Iranian Kurdistan by a landslide, which is a gross statistical anomoly which has never occured in the history of the Islamic Republic. - inactive, on 06/15/2009, -1/+8iRoy, trolling is an artform on digg. Your trolling is artistic as a pre-schooler vomiting their spaghetti on a piece of butcher paper.
Please work on your lackluster trolling abilities. - masamunecyrus, on 06/15/2009, -0/+6Ignoring everything TIME has to say with their somewhat crappy article, there's just one important reason to suspect voting fraud, and the BBC sums it up nicely.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8101621.stm
"The way the result was announced was very unusual. Usually, in all previous elections, the vote came in and was announced province by province. In this case, the results came in blocks of millions of votes - in percentages of the vote. As these blocks of votes came in, the percentages going to each candidate changed very, very little.
This appears to suggest that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did equally well in rural and urban areas. Conversely, it suggests that the other three losing candidates did equally badly in their home regions and provinces. This overturns all precedent in Iranian politics."
Ahmadinejad won with about 69%. In the farms he won with that percent, in the cities he won with that percent, he won with that percent everywere, regardless of whether it was an Ahmadinejad or a Mousavi stronghold. As some bloggers have pointed out, Mousavi loses by an almost -perfect- 2:1 ratio in every voting block.
http://www.behdad.org/help/ - VitriolAndAngst, on 06/15/2009, -3/+9Reason 6: Karl Rove spotted in Tehran.
- methdwman3, on 06/15/2009, -0/+5vap - The popular vote does not determine the president, so claiming an election is fraudulent because the winner didn't win the popular vote is tantamount to saying the Steelers super bowl victory is fraudulent because they didn't have the most wins of any team last year.
- vapn420, on 06/15/2009, -0/+5Uh... you do know who won the popular vote in 2000 right?
- cleveruser, on 06/15/2009, -1/+6The Iranian people seemed to expect justice, seeing as over 80% of them turned out to cast a vote. In countries that election frauds are expected, no one goes to vote...
- BohicaTwentyTwo, on 06/15/2009, -1/+6The 2000 US election was validated by the US Supreme Court. Irans election is going to be validated by these guys:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Guardians - odnaryperson, on 06/15/2009, -0/+5The Iranian people have some faith in their democratic system however, hence the 80% voter turnout... they were not compelled or coerced to vote, obviously such a large turnout does indicate a want of change and an expectation of justice
- brownsound00, on 06/15/2009, -0/+5Which is why we try to learn... instead of remaining ignorant of the world issues.
- mitikomon, on 06/15/2009, -2/+7We are not arab.
- FreddieD, on 06/16/2009, -0/+5Looks to me like the most damning evidence is at the end of the article... Ahmedinejad won handedly in Moussavi's home city, as well as other urban areas... all of whom polled very heavily for Moussavi.
Can you imagine the outrage in the US over voter fraud allegations if McCain had all of a sudden gotten more votes than Obama in Illinois, New York and California? - roostersheep, on 06/15/2009, -0/+5It's events like this which really display how we all need uninterfered internet access.
- methdwman3, on 06/15/2009, -1/+6Uh.. You do know the popular vote count is irrelevant, don't you?
- enginbeeringSB, on 06/16/2009, -0/+5While you have a good point about why the Ayatollah would have wanted to rig the election, Time's article was about the voting and the election itself, not the reasons why the Government would have rigged it.
- chubbstar, on 06/16/2009, -0/+4but how would they fit in the 6 different pictures? how? hoooooooooooooooooow?
- sockpuppets, on 06/15/2009, -0/+4Scroll down a bit, it's copied here for your viewing pleasure.
- shrudheuie, on 06/15/2009, -4/+8All the talk about "Obama style" campaigning and it turns out that the Bush style rigging is what won the day.
- borgdrone, on 06/16/2009, -0/+4What a surprize isn't it?. I guess you also are surprized that they have electricity & cars in Iran.
- noPCtoday, on 06/16/2009, -0/+4***** idiot, Iranians are not Arabs.
- trefitch, on 06/15/2009, -2/+6iRoy's on to something! Everyone! Bury your heads in the sand! If you can't drive there in 5 hours, then its too damn far to care about!
- vapn420, on 06/15/2009, -2/+5What does israel have to do with anything? Last time I checked, the election was in Iran, conducted by Iranians. Just because their politics doesn't jive with your politics doesn't mean they are bad or wrong. Also, for you to assume the candidates are carbon copies of each other just because of their nuclear and foreign policies is just plain ignorant.
- CivicTV, on 08/14/2009, -2/+5Yet they are out on the streets protesting.
- roostersheep, on 06/15/2009, -1/+4And there I was thinking that I was a part of the digg community despite the fact I'm not from America.
- TalentedMoron, on 06/15/2009, -0/+3I agree with Andy. Besides, not in every country, people get shot and die because they think the election has been rigged.
- coopaloop, on 06/16/2009, -0/+3You mean two rigged elections
- cygnus2112, on 06/15/2009, -0/+3Wrong. Iraq had great turnout too and it was rampant with calls of election fraud.
No one goes to vote when there is no exciting choice between the candidates.
80+% shows that the people want change. -
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