In Iran, Authorities Admit Voting Discrepancies
By Susie Madrak Tuesday Jun 23, 2009 8:00am
Naturally, voters are going to be even more suspicious that they've admitted this much:
CAIRO — Iran’s most powerful oversight council announced on Monday that the number of votes recorded in 50 cities exceeded the number of eligible voters there by three million, further tarnishing a presidential election that has set off the most sustained challenge to Iran’s leadership in 30 years.
The government continued with a two-track approach in its showdown over the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Even as the powerful Guardian Council acknowledged some irregularities in the June 12 election, it insisted that the overall vote was valid. At the same time, security forces stepped up their threats to treat protesters as criminals seeking to destabilize the country.
A group of as many as a thousand demonstrators at Haft-e-tir Square in central Tehran was quickly overwhelmed Monday by baton-wielding riot police and tear gas shortly after the Revolutionary Guards issued an ominous warning on their Web site saying that protesters would face “revolutionary confrontation.” Opposition leaders said the next move may be civil disobedience or a general strike.
The legitimacy of the vote remains at the core of the dispute. On Monday, the Guardian Council sought to help validate the outcome when it announced there had been discrepancies in 50 cities, which it said involved up to three million votes, not enough to overturn the landslide election margin that the government had announced for Mr. Ahmadinejad. But the recognition of a broad discrepancy between the number of recorded votes and registered voters in some districts only fueled suspicions that the election — and the Guardian Council’s arbitration of it — was unfair.
“I don’t think they actually counted the votes, though that’s hard to prove,” said Ali Ansari, a professor at the Institute of Iranian Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and one of the authors of a study of the election results issued by Chatham House, a London-based research group.
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Tammany Hall....
Vote early, and vote often.
to throw shoes like their Arab counterparts?
If's a shame Americans didn't have the ba... to do this in 2000 for our stolen election.
Americans have become too pacified to fight for our democracy , we just type about it..
This is why most Americans are living in a third world county style while our manufacturing plants , jobs and economy is outsourced to China , India and other foreign countries that have partner with the Global Giants.
Just listen the the BS we shallow daily from Corporations and our elected officials while they chip away our democracy , freedom , rights , jobs and country..
A statistical analysis performed at a confidence level far beyond what's necessary for normal certainty (99.5%).
The statistical analysis relies on Benfords Law, which has been proven not to be applicable to electoral results. There's no actual evidence of election fraud in Iran. Such claims and counter-claims have been compiled at IranAffairs.com--go see for yourself
Mousavi was vetted and cleared to run for office because he's a regime insider -- and yet some people think he presented such a large threat to the regime that they had to resort to massive election fraud to keep him out office? Use your brains.
3 million extra votes and they insist the vote was valid? Well no one ever claimed Iran was a democracy.
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And the 2000 Supreme Court fills in for Iran's Supreme Council.
By that measure, there is MORE democracy in Iran, since the Supreme Court of the United States is a nine person panel and the Supreme Council of Iran is a twelve person panel.
... our supremes wear more impressive robes, and their hats are just silly. So it may be a toss. ;-)
I agree.
In some cities, there was more than 100 percent turn out because Iranians are not required to vote in their hometowns. Altoghter than came out to 3 million "displaced" votes -- not enough to make a difference in the result even if fraudulent.
...voting standards set in 2000 and 2004 are catching on! Great job GOP!!
...is how few American's gave a rat's ass about 2000 being stolen and 2004 being smeared into nothingness (and don't get me started on Ohio 2004 and their hinky eVoting debacle).
Maybe American's can learn something from the Iranians.
abysmal...is that the few Americans that DID give a rats ass, and protested, were called all manner of unsavory things...
Maybe we can...but I'm feelin extremely cynical today...so I'm goin with no.
..dealing with Iran but I wonder what would have been the outcome of Americans taking to the streets en masse, in protest of W's appointment in 2000. Would they, (SCOTUS, the Democratic Party, the GOP, et.al.) have done anything different?
And the MSM didn't show up to report it?
The more they demand Obama do something, the more they look stupid. Mike Pence, John McCain, Lindsay Graham, now you can add Darrell Issa to the bunch.
Last night Rep. Darrell Issa tried to make a comparison between Iran and Tiananmen Square. The subsequent article, with clip debunks the claims Issa made.
Here is the clip.
http://progressnotcongress.org/?p=1919
Why doesn't Katherine Harris go over there and just call the election.
Remember "our American democracy has triumphed once again"? What an arrogant f^#%$&@ b#^$%
*rimshot*
Heh :)
It makes no sense that people who live under a supreme religious leader, would be so upset about fraud in a vote for leader of their sham democracy. Obviously the real target of the people's anger must be the religious leadership.
...hanging chads?
.
R E M E M B E R:
Just like America...
... Iran only pretends to be a Democracy.
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We have to ask ourselves during this crisis in Iran: What have we learned from the Iranians?
Is America swallowing its latest mouthful of corporate media shit?
In a country of 70 million that had record turnout and vote MOSTLY on paper ballots, how did they discover extra ballots already?
Why did Musavi declare himself the winner hours before the polls closed, and announce his susupicions of the election and intent to dispute the results?
Why did an American polling company with access to 30 provinces 2 weeks before the election get poll results of Armadinejad winning 2 to 1, just like they said?
Why did the public consider Armadinejad the winner of all 3 presidential debates?
Why is Twitter suddenly so widespread in Iran, when until recently it wasn't?
Why do so many Iranians tweet in English?
Just asking questions...
appear pretty much overnight here as well?
Your other questions...I don't have the answers to.
Overnight here took a couple of years of building use and word of mouth and knucklehead senators and Ashton. Over night there was about a few weeks to go from rare to widespread. Maybe it's a natural explosion. Just wondering.
And just in the last 2 or 3 months...you can't go five minutes without hearing about it.
Why is it such a stretch to accept that the votes for the election could be tallied and results announced in just one hour? Iran has a single timezone, and the average number of ballots per box is 840 and the only thing being voted on is the presidency. I'm not saying there weren't election irregularities but the fact that results were available so quickly isn't truly an indicator of irregularity.
There were 37 million votes tallied that quickly? If only we could accomplish that feat in the U.S.
America is spread out over 9 timezones.
In Canada there have been times that the results of the election have already been decided before the West coast polls even close. That would mean that enough votes counted within 3 hours (the time difference between Ontario/Quebec and B.C.).
by the Iranian elections board, only to be told a little while later that he actually lost in a landslide.
Because some places that were very anti-Ahmadinejad voted overwhlemingly for him, OVER 100% in some places.
And where did you see that the majority of the Iranian people said Ahmadinejad won the debates?
The same thing could be asked about the poll you mentioned, beacuse the one I saw was a public poll and in Iran, which means people weren't being 100% honest for obvious reasons. In a secret poll (which made people feel safer to be honest) done by Newsweek, he was shown losing by a wide margin.
Many Iranians are fluent in English. Besides, look around the internet, there are hundreds of translation sites where you tyoe in the phrase in your language and it translates it automatically to the language of your choice.
"And where did you see that the majority of the Iranian people said Ahmadinejad won the debates?"
'A Hard Look at the Numbers
What Actually Happened in the Iranian Presidential Election?
By Esam AL-Amin
June 22, 2009 "Counterpunch'
On the other hand, there was only one poll carried out by a western news organization. It was jointly commissioned by the BBC and ABC News, and conducted by an independent entity called the Center for Public Opinion (CPO) of the New America Foundation. The CPO has a reputation of conducting accurate opinion polls, not only in Iran, but across the Muslim world since 2005. The poll, conducted a few weeks before the elections, predicted an 89 percent turnout rate. Further, it showed that Ahmadinejad had a nationwide advantage of two to one over Mousavi.
http://counterpunch.com/amin06222009.html
From the same article:
According to official results, there were 46.2 million registered voters in Iran. The turnout was massive, as predicted by the CPO. Almost 39.2 million Iranians participated in the elections for a turn out rate of 85 percent, in which about 38.8 million ballots were deemed valid (about 400,000 ballots were left blank). Officially, President Ahmadinejad received 24.5 million votes to Mousavi’s 13.2 million votes, or 62.6 per cent to 33.8 per cent of the total votes, respectively. In fact, this result mirrored the 2005 elections when Ahmadinejad received 61.7 per cent to former President Hashemi Rafsanjani’s 35.9 per cent in the runoff elections. Two other minor candidates, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaee, received the rest of the votes in this election.
Thanks for posting this.
But one thing that strikes me is that results "mirrored the 2005" results. This year there was an 85% turnout while in the 2005 runoff there was a 48% turnout. I'm not saying its impossible but its strange that almost an additional 40% of eligible voters came out this time but the results were so similar.
These were the first elections involving televised debates between the candidates -- which explains the greater turn out.
There's no actual evidence of election fraud in Iran. Such claims and counter-claims have been compiled at IranAffairs.com--go see for yourself
of the author yields a funny little result. Ap[parently he has only written two articles and they're both titled "What Really Happened in Iran/Lebanon." You should read both articles to get a feel for what he's all about.
I have a funny feeling you're one of those people who think no matter what side America is on, it's the wrong side. Lord knows the site you reference feels that way. If people are rising up against an American ally, you shout for joy. When they rise up against our enemies, you downplay it and disregard it as nothing more than American interference. America can do no right and her enemies are never wrong. Blah, blah, blah.
The fact is, people are dying for something they believe in over there right now. For people like you to come in here and belittle what they're doing makes me sick. You'll say you're not belittling them, but you are. When you say it's all a big mistake or claim American interference, you say what they're doing is not real. I hate people like you almost as much as I hate Cons.
And even if America or Britain or both had something to do with it, who cares? Does it mean that they shouldn't be free? This is no longer about the election, people. What's going over in Iran is about freedom now. If America gave the nudge that started, I'm fine with that. I don't care if Beelzebub himself started it. If it eventually leads to the freedom of 65,000,000 of my father's countrymen (and women!), I'm all for it.
I'm done with you. You have as much credibilty as someone who reads Newsmax. See ya.
As usual...
Even if the hardliners are able to reign in the proteters now, it has only laid the foundation for a movement that will not be stopped!! Ahmadinejad, Khamenei and the rest of the Iranian Cons stuck their idiot heads into the world's worst-tempered hornets nest.
...honestly, how different is all this from the way anti-war and anti-globalization protestors are viewed and treated by the government here? What happens if Americans line up to protest the major party conventions. Do they not get beat down? We've got the FBI infiltrating pacifist groups like the Quakers for goodness sake, protecting us all from the pacifist threat, I suppose. We can pass judgment on this? I don't think so. We're not that country anymore (if we ever were). We've got Guardian Councils of our own to worry about.
-ep
I don't remember a beat down on the teabaggers. Maybe if Glenn Beck's million man (armed) march on Washington had occurred we might have seen some response from the government
They say the 3 million EXTRA votes would not be enough to sway the results, BUT that is assuming a 100% turnout. Lets say those 50 cities have anywhere from 30 - 90 million eligible voters, it would appear that there was a 103 - 110% voter turnout. So while that extra 3-10% may not be enough to change the results, what if the ACTUAL voter turnout had been more like 70%? What if the rest were fraudulent votes? In that case 35% of the votes would be fraudulent and could very well change the results.
Ballot stuffing increases the perceived voter turnout. Perhaps thats how they got their record breaking 85% voter turnout.
46.2 million eligible voters
85% voter turnout or 39.3 million votes cast
64% for Ahmadinejad, and 32% for Mousavi
Last presidential election saw 64% voter turnout in the first round and 48% in a second round.
These were not "extra votes" -- they were "displaced votes". Iranians are not required to vote in their hometowns, so there was more than 100 percent turnout in some places. In total, this consisted of 3 million "displaced" votes.
Even ASSUMING fraud, not enough to make a difference.
There's no actual evidence of election fraud in Iran. Such claims and counter-claims have been compiled at IranAffairs.com--go see for yourself
Looks like he just wants an uppsie.
HA!
There was more than 100% turn out in some cities for the very simply reason (not mentioned by the NY TImes) that people in Iran aren't required to vote in their hometowns and may instead vote where they work or commut to visit.
See Iran election fraud claims analyzed at IranAffairs dot com
Actually, they have been. They usually have several articles a day for the past week of the demonstrations, and it's mentioned at least in one every day.
If the election really was rigged, and the group of men actually in charge of Iraq were that concerned about the repercussions of the election, why didn't they make it look like it was really close, down to the nail, like it was in 2000 for us. Either they are actually the dumbest group of shadowy, arch-conservative Muslim theocratic dictators, or their government is able to use hate even more effectively than some of the groups in our country. Just my common-sense take on the situation. You'd have to really visit the country for a couple of weeks, reading all their news and listening to Iranians talking, in order to wrap your head around the real situation there. Everything I've seen by reporters who actually do their job, instead of sitting in air conditioned offices talking all day, seem to show an Iranian people hardly different than ourselves.
The reality in that country is probably more similar to our own than most people realize. They have an extreme, right-wing authority that spews hate all day, and some people fall for it. Or maybe enough are willing to fall for it, even more than in our country. Who knows, why doesn't someone do a real documentary on the country? Should I call up Frontline? I'm sure they are actually already working on a real news report on the matter.
Email Frontline... lol.
Iran's Ruling Council on the voter fraud, translated from the Farsi:
"Well, we've spent 10 minutes investigating voting fraud and we can't find a fucking thing wrong, so move on, nothing to see here, pay no attention to the mullah behind the curtain" (Bang, crash, flame and smoke)
What, you were expecting something profound? It's just like we felt in 2000. If you expect a fucking, you are never disappointed.
Ahh what the hell man. I went to the bar expecting a fucking tonight, and... NOTHING!
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