$10,000 Reward: Show How the Iranian Election Was "Stolen"

I will pay $10,000 to the first person or organization that presents a coherent story for how the Iranian election was stolen that is consistent with knowable facts about the Iranian election process as it took place on June 12-13 and the information that has been published since, including the ballot box tallies that have been published on the web by the Iranian government.

In order to collect the reward, you don't have to prove your case beyond a shadow of a doubt. But your numbers have to add up. To collect your reward, it's not sufficient to cite press reports or anecdotal evidence of election irregularities, or to claim as authority Western commentators or NGOs who have not themselves put together a coherent story. To collect your reward, your story has to tell how on June 12, a majority of Iranian voters voted for other candidates besides Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, yet this was transformed by the Iranian election authorities into a majority for Ahmadinejad.

Here are the numbers you have to explain. According to the official tally, Ahmadinejad got about 24.5 million votes. Mir Hossein Mousavi got 13.2 million votes. That's a difference of more than 11 million votes.

So, when I say your numbers have to add up, I mean your story of stolen votes has to overcome that 11 million vote gap. (The number would differ somewhat if you only want to say that Ahmadinejad didn't get a first round majority, as opposed to merely beating Mousavi, but it would not differ by much, since the third and fourth place candidates took such a small share of the vote.)

To illustrate: much has been made of the Guardian Council's "admission" that in about 50 cities or towns, the number of votes exceeded the number of people eligible to vote in that area. Note, first of all, that unlike in the United States, where in general you can only vote where you are registered, in Iran you can vote wherever you happen to be that day. So the fact that more votes were recorded in a jurisdiction than there are eligible voters in that jurisdiction, in a high turnout election, in itself proves nothing. But put that to the side. The Guardian Council noted that the total number of votes in the 50 cities and towns was about 3 million, and that even if you threw away all 3 million votes from all the people voting in the 50 cities and towns, it wouldn't affect the election result. Note that 3 million wasn't the difference between votes and voters, still less an estimate of the impact on the total, it was the total number of votes. The Guardian Council was simply making the commonsense argument that even if you take a number which is clearly much bigger than the likely impact of any discrepancy in the 50 towns, and throw that number away, it still doesn't come close to affecting the overall result.

If you've been getting your "information" from the TV, or some usually liberal commentators who shot from the hip with unsubstantiated "stolen election" claims in the days after the election and now can't back down, you may be surprised by this reward offer.

But remember: "everybody who was anybody" thought that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Why? Because that's what the TV said. There was no evidence, but that didn't matter.

Here we go again. Most people are not getting their information from print media, they're getting it from TV. And of course, even in the print media, you have to search for dissenting views from the TV narrative.

Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty had an op-ed in the Washington Post pointing out that Ahmadinejad's election victory was consistent with their pre-election polling data. (By the way, contrary to the claims of some analysts who cited their own unsubstantiated claim that Ahmadinejad could never have won the majority of Azeris as evidence of fraud, the Terror Free Tomorrow poll found Ahmadinejad had a strong lead among Azeris. And those who say Mousavi automatically had to win his home province should tell Al Gore.) Some folks who are lazy or bad at math have tried to discredit the TFT poll data, because it was taken three weeks before the election, there was a subsequent surge for the opposition and there were a high number of people who didn't state a candidate preference in the poll. But even if you allocate two-thirds of those not stating a preference to the opposition, you still get an election victory for Ahmadinejad in the first round. And some of the same folks who want to dismiss the Terror Free Tomorrow data because it was three weeks old want to cite election results from four years and even eight years earlier to claim the election was stolen. Of course, we don't predict elections in the U.S. like that.

Former NSC staffers Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett have had two pieces in the Politico pointing out how implausible the "stolen election" claim is. Iranian economist Djavad Salehi-Isfahani - professor at Virginia Tech and guest scholar at Brookings - noted in the New York Times online evidence that Ahmadinejad's programs to distribute income and wealth more evenly have begun to bear fruit, explaining his support in rural areas and small towns:

"Once these factors are taken into account, it is not so implausible that Mr. Ahmadinejad may have actually won a majority of the votes cast, though not those cast in Tehran. The well-to-do urbanite Iranians and their political leaders would do well to allow room for the possibility that a recount may reduce but not eliminate Mr. Ahmadinejad's lead, and, in that case, respect the voters will and prepare for a comeback in 2013. "

Of course, now that it's becoming increasingly clear that the "stolen election" story was a hoax, people are saying it doesn't matter if the election was stolen. This is predictable - it's hard for people to admit that they were wrong.

But it does matter. It matters a great deal.

The widely-believed story of the "stolen election" is already being used to argue for a toughening of U.S. policy against Iran and the abandonment of President Obama's promised diplomatic engagement. Recall that prior to the Iranian election, the alternatives that had been put before the American people were diplomatic engagement and war - or "crippling economic sanctions" - like cutting off Iran's gas imports - that are tantamount to war and will very likely lead eventually to a shooting war. So, in the U.S. political context - the U.S. is almost certainly not going to just leave Iran alone - if you argue that the U.S. cannot engage diplomatically with Iran, you're effectively arguing for eventual war.

That's why I was shocked that Avaaz, for example, is demanding that governments "withhold recognition" from the Iranian government. Apart from being a fantastically unrealistic demand - China is going to withhold diplomatic recognition from Iran because of the stolen election claims of the Iranian opposition? - Avaaz's current position is totally at odds with its earlier advocacy of diplomatic engagement. You cannot simultaneously campaign for diplomatic isolation of the Iranian government and promote diplomacy with it. You have to choose. And the alternative to diplomacy is war.

Of course people will say it's not about the election now, it's about the violent repression of the protests afterwards.

But whether we believe the election was stolen has a great bearing on our understanding of what happened afterwards. If the election was not stolen, and the real fraud was the opposition's claim that it was, then much of the opposition was organized around a fraudulent claim. It should go without saying that that doesn't morally justify violent repression. In a democracy, people have the right to believe whatever they want and advocate for it, even if - like people who believe Bush blew up the World Trade Center - their beliefs are obviously false. But if the Iranian election was not stolen, it does make the protest and crackdown fundamentally different political events: it fundamentally undermines the claim of the protesters to be speaking for the majority of the Iranian population, who just voted for a different candidate than the one supported by the protesters. And when the powerful media institutions of the West - which are regarded in much of the world, not without significant justification, as creatures of their host governments - promote the false claim that the election was stolen, the claim of the Iranian government of foreign intervention in Iran's internal politics becomes quite plausible to Iranians - the majority - who support the policies of their government more than they support the policies that the U.S. would like to impose on them.

Some will say it doesn't matter, because Iran is not a true democracy, regardless of what happened on June 12. Debate is restricted, and candidates are limited. It's obviously true that democracy in Iran is restricted. But that doesn't justify lying about the election, especially with all the terrible consequences those lies will likely have.

Furthermore, those who want to "support the protesters" by affirming their unsubstantiated claims of a stolen election aren't doing the opposition any favors. If the opposition in Iran wants to win a fair national election in the future, it will likely have to deal with the reasons that it didn't have majority support on June 12. It has to engage the majority of the Iranian population who likely have more illiberal social views, and it has to engage the majority of the Iranian population who want the government to engage in redistributive economic policies, not "Washington Consensus" winner-take-all policies that might please the International Monetary Fund and some better-off Iranians. It has to give up on the fantasy of riding to power on the backs of foreign intervention, and instead dedicate itself to a "long march" through Iranian institutions and Iranian public opinion.

I empathize with the Iranian protesters. I also wanted Mousavi to win. It would have made the job of promoting diplomacy with Iran a lot easier. I strongly sympathize with the protesters' desire for more social freedom, and empathize with their outrage over the crackdown.

I also know what it's like to lose such a national election that seems to validate and empower the most reactionary currents in society. I remember well when Reagan clobbered Mondale. I had campaigned for Mondale - without illusion about Mondale's cold war liberalism - to defeat Reagan. When Reagan won, it meant four more years of Reagan's unionbusting and terrorist war in Central America, among many other brutal and cruel Reagan policies. Reagan's re-election was a terrible event for America and the world.

But when Reagan was re-elected, I did not dissociate from reality into a fantasyland in which the election had been "stolen" and the majority of the American electorate shared my views. Neither should the Iranian opposition, nor its foreign sympathizers, dissociate from reality into a fanstasyland in which the majority of Iranian electorate shares their views. Accepting that Ahmadinejad won doesn't mean you love Ahmadinejad. It means you want to deal with the world as it exists in reality, not the world as it exists in your fantasy.

Comments

[kaveh1361]

The first, destroyer role of Basij know, the clergy have different idea they try to negative advertisement until the people become pessimist and after that they omitted the clergy without problem. The second Basij provide some point for active members such as priority in recruitment, some kinds of food, free traveling tour and else .The third role is so important and include two stage: 1- policy education 2- military education
Basij have different course for members and teaching policy flows and policy knowledge. In fact they advertise radical Islam in class and it will result irresponsible fulsome person. The second, all the active member of Basij learned military strategy that is very useful for coupdeta .
The final activity is intelligence role that statement about, it is very difficult but all the supervisor of ballot box identify by Basij in each area from some months ago and definitely they are their unanimous. In conclusion unlike, some analysts believe some factor was main reason cheating election such as wrong counting votes, to make number and etc .I believe Basij and mosque has been playing important role in Iran electional. They recognized weak point of people that it is religious. We should worry. If religious radical training of Basij will continue it is perilous for Islam and whole world.

[kaveh1361]

The story of stolen Iranian’s votes is interesting for all the people in domestic and overseas. We should notice that if we think about cheating in election day , we go to devious . I believe that cheating in election of Iran accured before the election .This article is include two subjects: mosque and Basij . First is about mosque of Iran. In Iran there are 60 000 mosque just specially for shies those function like party. Each mosque has a clergy that gets order from center of mosques organization directly. After time, the supreme authority decide about person choose, hypodermic advertising system beginning work by the clergy of mosque at many months ago. The main of people should perpar by talking about reasonable person for Islam. When we are near the election the clergy said to people, you should to vote this one and the people of Iran have weak point in front of religious issue. They have to overleap from their other basic requisition. But maybe you say some clergy of mosque are protesting against this position and exactly key point is here that is explain in the next paragraph . The second, Basij . Activity of Basij in Iran includes: 1- destroyer and completive 2-encoureger 3- trainer 4- intelligence
Basij in Iran is organization the same as framasonery in France. It has too many members through of the Iran. The number of member is rise everyday.

[blackberry0]

2. the ballot papers have not been folded. This is while people fold their ballot papers before putting them in a box

3. In one photo there are several ballot papers with Ahmadinejhad's name on them...in the same handwriting: http://i42.tinypic.com/rc6ek1.jpg

In short, just get yourself a translator and go through Iranian news websites (start with gooya.com). You'll save yourself some money.

Need even more proof? Then ask yourself, why was the government so reluctant to hold a recount, until they had enough time to rewrite 40 million new votes if they wanted? Why are they now so reluctant to hold a re-election? Why the violence? Why pointing the blame finger at the west? And why imprison, torture and rape the protectors to force them to confess to some lie that the silent protests they took part in were in fact part of their plan for a velvet revolution to overthrow the regime, and orchestrated by UK and US?!

[BiBiJan]

Why can't a reform movement translate the tremendous passion it commands into actual influence/electoral appeal etc.

Answer: its bloviating superstitious "supporters"

Why not hold a recount? Suppose they did. Suppose Ahmadinejad got 90% less votes. Now, suppose Ahmadinejad objects to the recount, and demands a re-re-count. How many recounts were you expecting any government to subject itself to before looking like a dufus.

Maybe pointing fingers at the West is over done, and counterproductive. But, no rational person can ignore that Western governments, and media had anything but utter contempt for Ahmadinejad, and their extreme bias undoubtedly played a role.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-crooke12-2009jul12,0,294349.story
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090622_iranian_election_and_revolution_test
http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/06/proof-israeli-effort-to-destabilize-iran-via-twitter/

[ANSWER]

I would like to dispute your notion of "Burden of Proof". First of all, if the governmental body in charge of executing the election seeks to tamper the results, it will also harness the vast resources at its disposal to try to do it slyly without leaving any trace of fraud. It will sabotage the efficacy of supervisors (e.g. shutting down SMS), it will deny access to the ballots by monitors or shuffle the order in which supervision is planned, and many other things we can't think about, simply because rigging elections has not been our expertise.

[ANSWER]

Let's, for the sake of argument, suppose that I post a link to an incontrovertible mathematical proof which establishes that this election to be legit would be tantamount to surpassing the speed of light. What would be the corollary of such a proof? Undeniably, it would require the Islamic Republic to unseat Ahmadinejad's administration immediately, prosecute them on charges of massive fraud that has led to felony, and automatically announce Mousavi the president elect.

Is this what Mousavi et al. are asking for??
Not at all, they are simply asking for *REDOING* the election. To that, logically, they need to show enough irregularities and mishandling to suggest that the election result cannot be trusted, has to be discarded and be redone. There is no such a thing as burden of proof for this demand, inasmuch as what is at stake for the opposition camp, is redoing the election. The fact that the government goes so far as shedding this much blood to refuse to consider this even as an option only corroborates the thesis of fraud, for if they indeed are the electorate winner and their execution of the election process is bona fide, they should be ready for a rematch anytime.

[ANSWER]

You might argue that running an election is costly, which considering the amount of damage inflicted thus far is a moot argument.

Elections are not like citizens who are presumed to be innocent until proven otherwise. They are an instrument for deciding the fate of an entire nation for a long duration of time. As such, they should be handled with extreme care and caution. To run an election, is to run an experiment to find out whom the majority wants. Like most other sophisticated scientific experiments, when the ramifications of the hypothesis the scientist is trying to prove or disprove are much more significant than the cost of the experiment itself, if she encounters fishy data, she wouldn't try to *prove* they are bogus, she will diagnose what could be the possible the reason, try to mitigate it and redo the experiment. This is absolutely in the spirit of the election law as well.

[BiBiJan]

Mullah Nasreddin famously claimed:

In the dead of night, if you don't hear foot steps, it is proof possitive that a thief is in he house with very quiet shoes.

Eventually, lacking convincing evidence, all conspiracy theories spiral to the supernatural. E.g. "it will harness the vast resources at its disposal to try to do it slyly without leaving any trace of fraud."

[ANSWER]

I read your previous comment that because the government has run elections before without riots, it has done its job to prove the election has been run impeccably. Well, how many elections has the *incumbent* government, which not so coincidentally seeks another term, run before?

The opposition camp may not have a smoking gun in his hand as it happened that whoever was holding the gun had managed to keep everyone out of the scene. But they certainly have shown enough irregularities to make their rerun request a legitimate one.

If you manage to read Mousavi's report, it is indeed in this spirit. It seeks to demonstrate that infringement and irregularities have happened in such a degree that the election law mandates redoing the election.

On an orthogonal, yet relevant note, in the case of Iran's nuclear program. Do we have any *proof* that it is belligerent? Absolutely NOT. Should we shut up and don't ask for any transparency until they are ready to test the bomb?

[Sanli Faez]

Based on this report, both Ballot stuffing and Randomized fabrication of results independent of real counting are plausible. The organizers had enough reserve boxes (under no control by any representative), enough extra voting coupons (more than 12 million), and even enough extra stamps (in total twice the number of boxes) to make the result they wanted possible. Just to give you a flavor, I translate a couple of points in the above mentioned report 3:

a- In 2233 boxes A.N had more than 95% of the votes (in 307 of them more than 99%) corresponding to a total of 1262266 votes (it is really 7 digits).

b- If one compares the state results (which were announced first in a few hours) with the sum of individual box results (announced after one week) in each section, there 78 cities there is a difference between 1 to 29000, suggesting that the results are generated top-down.
The total number of votes in these boxes is 11175353 (yes, 8 digits).

For your information, in all the previous elections, the results were announced first district by district.

[BiBiJan]

Based on which report?

[joe c]

Can you please tell us where we can find these figures ?

[Sanli Faez]

I posted my comment in three parts, since it was too long to fit one. For some reason(!) the moderator did not like the middle part of my comment where I have given the links to the report on ghalamnews.ir and complained about author's negligence of that report and his rushing into conclusions, while many presented disputes are not yet resolved.

These figures are worked out based on Interior's Ministry website. The summary is in the same report you have suggested yourself for reading. Actually the interior ministry have changed those files several times on their website, removing the spreadsheet files and keeping only pdf documents in the later stages.

Many discrepancies in their own files were shown on some Farsi Blogs last week.

[Sanli Faez]

Giving our 10,000 dollars is not so generous for solving a fraud case, which has cost at least 10 million dollars, few lives (in form of suspicious accidents!), and a few weeks before and after the election to plan.

Do not worry, you do not have to raise the prize, many people are trying to break the secret voluntarily, not for your generous prize but for protecting themselves (and eventually your interests as well) against a dark military dictatorship who is rising at the heart of middle east. Haven't you been shaken enough by Khomeini's revolution at the time of Nixon, justify Ahmadinezhad's Coup and you will feel the real Tsunami. A.N.'s next 4 years will be much worse for the whole world than his first term. The Iranian economy is getting disastrous and he will need much more international crisis to strengthen his iron feast.

[BiBiJan]

I agree. $$$$s makes it cheap. I think people (ion both sides) should just offer to eat their boots, if they are proven to be merely speculating.

[joe c]

Some reading advised :

http://www­.4shared.c­om/file/11­6464162/4e­c10d8b/DET­AILED_INTE­RPRETATION­_OF_THE_SE­NTRY_COMMI­TTEE_Final­_translati­ondocx.htm­l

[BiBiJan]

Thanks for that link. These are the legal challenges mounted by Mr Mousavi. Reading through them the consistent thread seems to be that the electorate were given handouts, and too much campaigning on behalf of the incumbant was conducted at tax payer expense.

Unfortunately, it appears Mr Mousavi himself is suggesting a majority of votes did go to Ahmadinejad, but that the electorate were fooled. This does not amount to election fraud, but odious tactics in campaigning. While doudtless some individuals will have to answer misuse of public fund charges, and while some tightenning of election rules are called for, there does not appear to be grounds for the annulment of the election.

[joe c]

Either you misread, either you read only the paragraph you wanted to read :

- what about the observers not being able to get to polling place ?
- what about the observers not being there at the beginning of the poll ?
- what about the observers not allowed to stay for the counting ?
- almost ballot box having a multiple of 100 votes ?
- what about missing ballot paper, extra stamps, extra printed papers with no serial number ?

there is still a lot to add but i can see you don't want to see those points.

[Shahab61]

Robert,

Keep 10000$ to yourself because you've already taken your side and you are not looking for the truth. To see my point, disregard the four first paragraphs of your post and see what remains.

But, just give me one answer: why do you feel you know more about the internals of Iranian politics than people in Iran do? Have you ever considered that people in Iran can think too and the points you are making has actually hapenned to them too? So why is the massive frustration?

To be honest, to me, your article looks so disgraceful as it cries out that, hey, you idiots in streets of Iran, what you are experiencing is an aftermath of a trauma that, somehow magically, has spread all over your minds.

About your challenge, I can not prove anything to you. Because, as a result of spending 26 years of my life in Iran, I have only learnt that, in Iranian politics, you should disregard the text itself and just read between the lines. Ans as you already know, between-the-line interpretations are not acceptable in any court of justice. So, be happy that no one will ever get your 10000 dollars.

Shahab

[BiBiJan]

If only Robert had read .....

http://www.merip.org/mer/mer250/abrahamian.html

[msnhdr]

1.What is the definition of "stolen election"? The rationale of "election" is to ensure ALL people equal right to give vote. Otherwise an accurate "polling" can determine the winner at a fraction of cost, but doesn't provide the same FEELING to people. That's the main point.
For whatever reason a great number of Iranians FEEL cheated and manipulated, and this fact alone, regardless of the result, shows that the Government has not provided minimum trust required for a normal "election". If this is not "stolen election", what is?

2. It is the Government's responsibility to show that the election was legitimate, not the other way round. Put $10,000 reward to show the election was "right", and see what you get.

3. If the win was a true landslide, why fear another election?

4. If you think a 100% bulletproof evidence of fraud could possibly make slightest effect to the whole thing, you are not quite familiar to Ahmadinejad's well known history of shameless lies.

[BiBiJan]

1. Western media uniformly reported Mousavi's election campaign a master piece and convinced Mousavi supporters to delude themselves that they are part of landslide majority. Later the media unformly dubbed the election as "rigged" and/or "stolen". This incensed the Mousavi supporters.

"... The global media, obsessively focused on the initial demonstrators failed to notice that while large, the demonstrations primarily consisted of the same type of people demonstrating. Amid the breathless reporting on the demonstrations, reporters failed to notice that the uprising was not spreading to other classes and to other areas. In constantly interviewing English-speaking demonstrators, they failed to note just how many spoke English and had smartphones.

... But critically, the protesters were not joined by any of the millions whose votes the protesters alleged were stolen. In a complete hijacking of the election by some 13 million votes by an extremely unpopular candidate, we would have expected to see the core of Mousavi’s supporters joined by others who had been disenfranchised. On last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, when the demonstrations were at their height, the millions of Mousavi voters should have made their appearance. They didn’t. We might assume that the security apparatus intimidated some, but surely more than just the Tehran professional and student classes possess civic courage. While appearing large, the demonstrations actually comprised a small fraction of society."

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090622_iranian_election_and_revolution_test

[BiBiJan]

2. Goverments, Iran's included, show elections are legitimate by following rules and procedures established by law and conducted dozens of times previously without riots.

3. If everytime the losing side of an election charges "fraud", a government did "another election", the country would be in a state of constant elections.

4. I don't think there are folks out there sitting on 100% bulletproof evidence of fraud because they doubt it will have any effect on the whole thing. Not only no evidence of massive fraud has surfaced, plently of data and testimony exists that indicate there was no massive fraud.

http://bibijon.org/iranimage/articles/Iran-election.htm

[msnhdr]

1. If you have followed the point I made, *regardless* of the reason (you blame western media, I blame Ahmadinejad’s self character, his own selected multi-millionaire interior minister, and his own frequent obvious lies on Iran’s national media), a considerable number of people seriously doubt the result. A dubious election at this level is practically a stolen election, because both hurt people’s feeling the same way. An election that (I repeat, for what ever reason) fails to fulfill people’s trust is like no election at.

And ordering people to show the trick or accept it is totally nonsense. I hardly believe David Copperfield truly walks through wall though I can't give evidence against it. Same logic goes here.

2.If the same laws and procedures were conducted this time, Ahmadinejad’s so called win would have been canceled by the Guardian Council, as bribing people (I received a President gift myself) or using government resources for campaign had never been tolerated before.

3.No. The protesters don't demand election again and again until Mousavi wins. I believe even the slightest sign from the Government that people’s voice has been heard and their concern will be addressed honestly would be enough to stop the riots at once. Moreover, a repeat election was a fantastic opportunity for Ahmadinejad and his gang to answer the western media and people inside once for ever.

Reason: Never do a magic trick twice

[Ifiwereyou]

For this and one other reason I believe the election was fraudulent, i.e. high voter turnout. History shows that high voter turnout is when people are determined to bring change, not endorse the same!
(Labour's landslide victory in the UK in 1997 for example) Even the regime were astonished at the high voter turnout - they had for years struggled with extreme 'voter apathy'.

I am very close to Iran - my spouse is Iranian. Neither my spouse, nor their family, nor any of their huge extended family or circle have ever voted in an election in 30 years. Why not? They did not believe in the system and felt that to vote was to give legitimacy to the interlopers and it was never a free election anyway, since only approved candidates could stand.

(My in-laws are from rural Iran, and mostly are not in the under 30 age group btw!)

This year for the first time ever they & everyone they knew voted! They felt that maybe in Mousavi there was a man who just might be able to bring more of the longed for reforms.

Obviously they do not represent the whole country and I can only speak to what I know, but for me unverified numbers, and high voter turn out - which gave Ahmadenajad such a huge majority all point to something very suspicious.

So there you go, you can put your $10,000 away, for the test you have set is as impossible as catching the

[Ifiwereyou]

Your $10,000 is totally safe Robert, it can never be won! Why? Because your starting point is that the figures quoted are actually genuine and so you are asking people to prove something from figures that cannot in any way be verified, and you are assuming that what needs to be proved is the difference between the 24.5 million that Ahmadinajad got and the 13 million that Mousavi got.

But there were no independent monitors - not even from within Iran. Those running the election, were the same people as those counting and recounting the votes, who were the same people who were monitoring themselves.

So actually we don't even know how many really voted, never mind who they really voted for!

[mizsandali irani]

best reason for cheating in Iran election is Ahmadi nezhad himself + Sadegh mahsoli az inertial minister + Karam DAnshjoo az chef of election headquarter .

[Squaker]

Some new stuff is apparently coming out
In the form of a 20+ page report from Mousavi
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090705/wl_mideast_afp/iranvotemousavi
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/04/AR2009070402685.html

I unfortunately can not find the full document, Mousavi's website seems to be down again. And nobody I can find has the actual document copied to their site. But I assume we will be able to eventually read it here:
http://www.mirhussein.com/

"It charged that the hardline incumbent had distributed cash to secure the votes of working class Iranians."
"It asked why the interior ministry had printed 14 million more ballots than the total registered electorate of some 46 million."
Along with basic charges of bias on the part of election officials

It seems like a stretch to me. I have read that people don't have to vote in an assigned place in Iran, so they would need extra ballots. However would they need 14 million? In theory 3 million could be extra ballots and the other 11 could have been fraudulently cast for Ammadenijad I suppose. Not exactly sure how, but that seems to be the accusation Mousavi's camp is making

[Squaker]

Thanks for your article. Its always fun to watch the total saturation of ourn media towards one view point.

As far as the contention that the election was stolen. Basically the argument that I hear is that the votes were never counted at all. The evidence given for this is that they allegedly announced the results too quickly for the paper ballots to be counted. And they further more have apparently constructed some kind of number matrix that can tell them if the district by district results are a random sample or a self generated set of numbers.

I have no idea the validity of such claims. Obviously not living there, not speaking the language, and knowing next to nothing about their domestic politics and system of government these things are hard to tell

Either way it seems clear Iran is a Polarized country and Ammedinijad has about 50% of the popular support. So I would oppose picking a side in their disputed election.

[RobertNaiman]

I'm with you in being for not taking a side. To claim that the election was stolen is to take a side, and the standard of evidence should be high for such an incendiary claim.

Some - but not all - of those who say that the election was stolen say that there was no count at all. Others say that ballot boxes were stuffed. Of course these are very different claims - if you can just make up any numbers you want, why stuff ballot boxes?

If the election process unfolded as it was supposed to, it is not a mystery that they were able to announce a result Friday night, based on partial returns. (The count was not completed Friday.) The count is supposed to begin locally, at the polling place, not centrally. The central count is simply the aggregation of the local counts. The voting centers are supposed to report their results to the Ministry of Interior. It does not take that long to locally count hundreds of ballots for a single office in which there are four candidates. The counting time was similar to the 2005 runoff, and the counting time in 2005 was not considered evidence of fraud at that time, to my knowledge. I have read that in Canada they hand-count paper ballots in a few hours.

(continued below.)

[RobertNaiman]

(continued from previous comment.)

The election process involved hundreds of thousands of people, with the opposition having tens of thousands of observers. As far as I am aware, Mousavi has not publicly identified the ballot boxes which his people were allegedly blocked from observing; certainly this information has not showed up in Western press reports. If a ballot box was observed, then it was impossible to steal votes at that ballot box, because the official tally wouldn't match what the observer saw in the polling place. (continued below.)

In this follow-up piece, I interviewed someone who talked to Mousavi's campaign manager for the province of Abadan.

Habib Ahmadzadeh: Mousavi Must Say Which Ballot Boxes He Disputes
.huffingto­npost.com/­robert-nai­man/habib-­ahmadzadeh­-mousavi_b­_222483.ht­ml" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/habib-ahmadzadeh-mousavi_b_222483.html

Apparently there were 142 ballot boxes in Abadan and Mousavi had 127 observers. Based on his observers, Mousavi's campaign manager for Abadan did not dispute the official count. So that tells me that at least in Abadan, the result was accurate. If there was a problem somewhere else, someone should tell us where it was.

[Paul Hilder]

Robert, here is a story about what *might* have happened in the Iranian elections which is, I believe, consistent with the information publicly available at present. It is one of several possible credible scenarios -- by no means the only one -- but it may meet your criteria.

The putative election-rigger's script might run like this:

Step 1: Decimate Karroubi's vote, and move it into Ahmadinejad's column.

This popular cleric won 5 million votes in the first round in 2005, and supposedly only 333,000 in 2009. In his home province of Lorestan, which habitually votes for its own, he won a landslide of 440,000 votes in 2005, supposedly only 44,000 in 2009. Let's say that Karroubi actually won 1.3 million votes nationwide, including a big chunk in Lorestan. That seems credible. Okay: move a million of those to Ahmadinejad.

Step 2: Decimate Rezaie's vote, and move it into Ahmadinejad's column.

This conservative ex-head of the Revolutionary Guards was expected to attract more traditional or pragmatic conservative voters who couldn't face voting for either Ahmadinejad or the reformists. He supposedly won 678,000 votes nationwide. But earlier this week he announced over 900,000 people had written to him with their ID numbers saying they voted for him. Let's say (for the sake of round numbers) that another 778,000 in fact voted for him but didn't write to him subsequently. That sounds credible. Okay, so move another million votes from Rezaie to Ahmadinejad in the rigging room.

(to be continued...)

[Paul Hilder]

Step 3: Cut Mousavi's vote and move some of it to Ahmadinejad, especially in Tehran.

Mousavi was privately polling as high as 60% in Tehran toward the end, and Ahmadinejad as low as 30%. But official results showed Ahmadinejad ahead in Tehran, with 3.82 million votes to Mousavi's 3.37m. That's quite a victory. How could it have been delivered? Well, if polls were correct, Mousavi could really have won more like 4.42 million, and Ahmadinejad maybe 2.22 million. That's 2.66 million votes which we move from Mousavi's column into Ahmadinejad's - bam, he wins Tehran by a whisker.

Let's say Mousavi didn't surge as much elsewhere. So we switch another 340,000 votes from him to Ahmadinejad in a couple of places, particularly the Azeri-majority area from which he comes. So he loses there, and we have a total of 3 million votes moving from Mousavi to Ahmadinejad.

Step 4: Get the Basij to do a bit of re-voting and ballot-stuffing.

There are hundreds of thousands of Basij militiamen. There are anecdotes about them being permitted to vote more than once -- this may explain why reported turnout was more than 100% in several provinces, including rural isolated areas. So, say another 500,000 votes for Ahmadinejad which didn't exist before. Then there are circa 15,000 mobile ballot boxes which had no scrutiny, and millions of extra ballot papers printed before the election. Have basij fill in 500,000 papers and dropping them in those boxes.

[Paul Hilder]

(cont'd...)
Or make up the numbers in the interior ministry -- after all, no-one is observing and validating the count. (In all this, it helps somewhat that Ahmadinejad's ally Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi has just given a fatwa that approves of election-rigging.)

In summary:

It seems possible that Karroubi and Rezaie each got around a million more votes than reported and that these were switched into Ahmadinejad's column at the count, as were 3 million of Mousavi's votes (mostly in Tehran), and that another million or so were stuffed into boxes, inflating Ahmadinejad's total by 6 million overall. Of course, the numbers probably wouldn't be so round.

Adding up the hypothetical real votes on this scenario, I get 16.22 million for Mousavi, 1.33 million for Karroubi, 1.68 million for Rezaie, and 18.53 million for Ahmadinejad (small roundings throughout).

Ahmadinejad still gets the most votes, but he is just below the 50% threshold. Run-off election. Outcome uncertain.

This is just one scenario. Maybe Ahmadinejad got more, maybe he got less. Nobody knows what the real numbers were. There was no independent observation of the count, and until and unless they publish results by polling place it will be tough to do further cross-checking. But there's plenty of reason to doubt the outcome, and plenty of reason to doubt an inquiry by the Guardian Council, over half of whose members openly campaigned for Ahmadinejad.

[Paul Hilder]

I don't expect you to shell out $10,000, Robert. But it would be good to know what you think of this scenario. Is it consistent with the publicly known facts? Is it more or less credible than the publicly announced results?

I'm not saying this is actually what happened. Who knows, maybe Ahmadinejad won? As Ricken said earlier, Avaaz is currently focused on countering the crackdown on protesters, human rights advocates, journalists and citizens which has come in the wake of the announcement of the results. And none of this means that diplomacy should not be pursued to prevent war, which would decimate the chances of reformists and democrats in more than one place.

But the millions of people who took to the streets across Iran last week understood the math, and the failings of the process. They knew that there was at least a chance they had been cheated.

And most importantly: even if they were wrong, they didn't deserve what they got. They deserved the truth, and the freedom to speak their minds.

They still do.

[RobertNaiman]

The most important thing: as I said, your story has to be consistent with what is known about the Iranian election and counting process.

The official results - by ballot box - are posted here:

http://www.moi.ir/Portal/Home/Default.aspx?CategoryID=832a711b-95fe-4505-8aa3-38f5e17309c9

(this page is in Farsi, but you can get the gist of it through google translate.)

The election process is described here. As far as I know, there has been no serious dispute that this was the election process:

Was Iran's Election Stolen?
By Mark Weisbrot
co-director, Center for Economic and Policy Research
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/needtoknow/2009/06/was_irans_election_stolen.html

[RobertNaiman]

By the way, are you sure that you aren't confusing in your story the *city* of Tehran with the *province* of Tehran?

You write:

"Mousavi was privately polling as high as 60% in Tehran toward the end, and Ahmadinejad as low as 30%. But official results showed Ahmadinejad ahead in Tehran, with 3.82 million votes to Mousavi's 3.37m."

I assume by "private poll" you mean an opposition poll. Has it been published anywhere? Did it show a majority for Mousavi in the *province* of Tehran, or only in the city? There's a huge difference.

According to the official results, Ahmadinejad indeed lost the *city* of Tehran to Mousavi by a substantial margin, 52-43 (rounding.)

But Ahmadinejad won the (much larger) *province* of Tehran 51-49 (rounding.)