Iranian democracy

[crackerjack]

Presumably this puts an end to any lingering questions (and it's amazing how often this still comes up) about rigging.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6553843.ece

In 50 Iranian cities the number of votes cast in this month presidential election exceeded the number of eligible voters, the state's election watchdog admitted today.

The surprising admission by the Guardian Council was, however, designed to undermine the claims of the defeated candidates that the vote was rigged.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's main rival in the hotly-disputed election, and the other two losing candidates have claimed that the vote exceeded eligible voters in as many as 170 districts.

Abbasali Kadkhodai, a spokesman for the council of senior clerics, told the state television channel IRIB: "Our investigation shows that the number of districts they announced is not correct. Based on our preliminary report, 50 districts face this issue."

edit: funny that this is seen as undermining Mousavi. You claimed we cheated thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis much, but we only cheated thiiiiiiiiiiiiiis much. Ha!

 

[scottdisco]

Presumably this puts an end to any lingering questions (and it's amazing how often this still comes up) about rigging.

good point.

just another example of the moral and intellectual poverty of viewing world affairs through the debilitating prism of my enemy's enemy is my friend, i suppose?

Instead, in confronting the political turmoil that has consumed the country this past week, the Iranian government appears to be engaging in a practice often called deep packet inspection, which enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes, according to these experts.

The monitoring capability was provided, at least in part, by a joint venture of Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia Corp., the Finnish cellphone company, in the second half of 2008, Ben Roome, a spokesman for the joint venture, confirmed.

more here

 

[crackerjack]

1.35pm:
General Ali Fazli, recently appointed as commander of Seiyed al-shohada of the Revolutionary Guards in Tehran province, has been arrested for refusing to carry Khamenei's order to use force against demonstrators, according to an unconfirmed report on the Balatarin, spotted by Robert Tait.

Earlier reports suggested that Fazli, who lost an eye during Iran's war with Iraq, had been sacked for his non-compliance. He is said to have been taken to an unknown location after his "arrest". Could this be a first sign of a split among the upper echelons in the security forces?

Interesting.

 

[crackerjack]

Call for arrest of Mousavi by Ali Shahrokhi, head of parliament's judiciary committee.

(sorry, you could just read the Guardian's update thingy, all I'm doing is pasting from there )

 

[vimothy]

Juan Cole summarises the new Chatham House study on the Iranian election results:

· In two Conservative provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, a turnout of more than 100% was recorded.

· At a provincial level, there is no correlation between the increased turnout, and the swing to Ahmadinejad. This challenges the notion that his victory was due to the massive participation of a previously silent Conservative majority.

· In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that Ahmadinejad took not only all former conservative voters, and all former centrist voters, and all new voters, but also up to 44% of former Reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two groups.

· In 2005, as in 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates, and Ahmadinejad in particular, were markedly unpopular in rural areas. That the countryside always votes conservative is a myth. The claim that this year Ahmadinejad swept the board in more rural provinces flies in the face of these trends.

 

[3 Body No Problem]

Presumably this puts an end to any lingering questions (and it's amazing how often this still comes up) about rigging.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6553843.ece

It seems things are more complicated than the Times Online article want to make it appear, because what the Times Online article does not mention is, paraphrasing Abbasali Kadkhodai (who is mentioned in the article): " voter turnout of above 100% in some cities is a normal phenomenon because there is no legal limitation for people to vote for the presidential elections in another city or province to which people often travel or commute. " Source.

I'm confused by all of this.

 

[crackerjack]

It seems things are more complicated than the Times Online article want to make it appear, because what the Times Online article does not mention is, paraphrasing Abbasali Kadkhodai (who is mentioned in the article): " voter turnout of above 100% in some cities is a normal phenomenon because there is no legal limitation for people to vote for the presidential elections in another city or province to which people often travel or commute. " Source.

I'm confused by all of this.

Is there a source other than this Iran govt-sponsored channel?

 

[3 Body No Problem]

Is there a source other than this Iran govt-sponsored channel?

Not that I'm aware of, but the Times Online article seems to have been fed by the same source.

I feel that the whole election thing is the visible manifestation of a behind-the-scences powerstruggle for the succession of Khamei between different fraction of the current Iranian power-elite (possibly with additional covert operations by other powers).

 

[polystyle]

Rev Guards warn > voting errors admitted > hints of behind the scenes >
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/world/middleeast/23iran.html?hp

Rafsanjani back story
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/world/middleeast/22rafsanjani.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

As the Gov and it's security app's get better at threatening and therefore clamping down on street protests and gatherings -
the internal fight heated up ...
There was a newscrawl yesterday saying the police had not been given permission to shoot protestors,
the word was that Neda was shot by lone Basji shooting from someone's window echoing yesterday and last night.

Day 9 after elections. Now well into territory beyond what either side would have anticipated

 

[vimothy]

I feel that the whole election thing is the visible manifestation of a behind-the-scences powerstruggle for the succession of Khamei between different fraction of the current Iranian power-elite (possibly with additional covert operations by other powers).

Is that incompatible with vote-rigging?

Anyway, FiveThirtyEight:

For all the complex series of statistics that have been run on Iran's election, it's the simplest that might prove to be the regime's downfall. More people "voted" than were eligible to vote -- in a lot of places. The interior ministry admits to 50 such instances out of the 300+ jurisdictions in which Iran tallied results. That is widespread, prime facie and admitted-to evidence of fraud, and I don't see how the Guardian Council expects people to buy the argument that whatever caused the tub to overflow in those 50 cities was not also tainting the results throughout the rest of the country. The Chatham House report we linked to earlier today found that there were more "votes" than voters in two entire provinces.

The Interior Ministry will presumably next try to argue that these were irregularities owing to the mere overzealousness of the Iranian people. Perhaps, as happens with some regularity in the United States, people who thought they were eligible to vote but weren't nevertheless tried to and weren't screened properly by elections officials. But this explanation doesn't hold water -- voter eligibility is not a tricky matter in Iran. The Statistical Center of Iran reports that, as of the last census, there were some 47.7 million people aged 18 or older in Iran, which is the voting age in that country. By contrast, the widely-cited figure is that there were some 46.2 million eligible voters. Virtually all people aged 18 or older, evidently, are eligible to vote in Iran, which has very few non-citizens (only about 1.6 million according to official estimates).

This leaves only two possibilities: that there was widespread ballot-stuffing or that the results in some or all areas don't reflect any physical count of the ballots but were fabricated whole hog on a spreadsheet.

 

[3 Body No Problem]

Is that incompatible with vote-rigging?

No.

Anyway, FiveThirtyEight:

538 also doesn't mention the (seemingly) lacking legal requirement to vote where one is registered to vote.

 

[vimothy]

Hmm, this is true, though Silver must surely be aware of this as he quotes the Press TV article you link to. Some lively comments referring to this fact, though, so hopefully Nate will pick it up in a later post. And maybe someone who can read Farsi will chime in and let us all know what Iranian law actually stipulates.

But it's hardly the only discrepency. For instance, this,

[A]cross the board there is a massive increase in turnout, with several provinces increasing their participation rate by nearly 75%. This increase results in substantially less variation in turnout between provinces, with the standard deviation amongst provincial turnouts falling by just over 23% since 2005. The 2005 results show a substantial turnout gap, with seven provinces recording turnout below 60%, and ten above 70%. In 2009, only two were below 70% and 24 were above 80%. In fact, 21 out of 30 provinces had turnouts within 5% of 83%. The data seems to suggest that regional variations in participation have suddenly disappeared.

This makes the evident lack of any sort of correlation between the provinces that saw an increase in turnout and those that saw a swing to Ahmadinejad (Fig.1) all the more unusual. There is no significant correlation between the increase in participation for a given province and the swing to Ahmadinejad (Fig.1). This lack of correlation makes the argument that an increase in participation by a previously silent conservative majority won the election for Ahmadinejad somewhat problematic.

Seems pretty damning. The report also notes that Iran is,

...a country where allegations of ‘tombstone voting’... are both longstanding and widespread... This problem did not start with Ahmadinejad; according to official statistics gathered by the International institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in Stockholm, there were 12.9% more registered voters at the time of Mohammed Khatami’s 2001 victory than there were citizens of voting age.

Overall, I have not seen any (statistical) evidence that suggests that the election was not rigged, merely various qualifications about the degree of certainty one can ascribe to the hypothesis that it was. In fact, I would be genuinely surprised if the election was not rigged -- the idea that it was a fair vote just doesn't make sense to me from a political economy perspective.

 

[crackerjack]

4.50pm:
A warning of a "decisive" confrontation from the Revolutionary Guard, via the state-backed Press TV news:

"We warn the main elements behind the riots and their deceived supporters to … halt their acts of sabotage and end their riots or be prepared for a decisive and revolutionary confrontation with the Guards, Basij and other security and disciplinary forces"

4.30pm:
The British embassy in Tehran is evacuating the families of staff members.

Latest from Graun liveblog

 

[scottdisco]

what's the latest from Evin? does anybody know if the phone lines to there are still down, cut off?

if this is the case, an obviously very worrying state of affairs, with potentially chilling implications, given Evin's history.

 

[four_five_one]

My god, I'm starting to really hate Chavez... terrible cognitive dissonance.

Edit: Speaking of dissonance -- Lenin's Tomb, pretty funny.

 

[four_five_one]

A strike would seem to be the better option now then, opposed to demonstrating on the streets, given the comments by the Revolutionary Guard. Saw something earlier about a possible strike on the 26th? Anyone know anything more?

 

[vimothy]

Just been to a demo at Piccadilly Gardends -- lots of singing. Twas good. Marg bar diktator!

 

[crackerjack]

Just been to a demo at Piccadilly Gardends -- lots of singing. Twas good. Marg bar diktator!

good on you. they've been outside iranian embassy every evening and i keep meaning to get down there but...er, haven't yet.

A strike would seem to be the better option now then, opposed to demonstrating on the streets, given the comments by the Revolutionary Guard. Saw something earlier about a possible strike on the 26th? Anyone know anything more?

It would seem the best step forward. Where did you read about the 26?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

A strike would seem to be the better option now then, opposed to demonstrating on the streets, given the comments by the Revolutionary Guard.

if there is a widespread general strike it's going to be real trouble for the regime.

definitely seems the best option - seems like that vast wave of momentum has, inevitably, crested & is receding - I guess this could just be a lull but I doubt it. a couple days of getting hammered by the IRGC etc, gloves off, will take the fight out of anyone. definitely a better strategy to come at overwhelming force obliquely. certainly more difficult for the regime to control.

the longer this goes on the better the chance that some nervous Basij kid w/twitchy trigger finger will touch off a spark beyond anyone's control.

that Neda video is just brutal. tho by all accounts it sounds like the shooting was in cold blood, anything but nervous in the heat of the moment.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

@vimothy - good on ya mate!

sounding like a broken record but has anyone heard anything about the Artesh?

seems like Rafsanjani doesn't have the juice to take to on AN/Khamenei etc. vaguely reminiscent of Putin & the oligarchs in Russia.