The Iranian authorities have admitted that there are some discrepancies in the election results.
Apparently the results in “only fifty cities” are wrong with more votes being recorded than eligible voters. Which seems in direct contrast to the announcement of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who said 3 days ago that “the Islamic Republic would not cheat“.
There are, according to Wikipedia, around 250 cities in Iran, so apparently a 20% error rate is acceptable. Of these cities only 80 or so have a population greater than 100,000. So depending on which cities have the “errors” there could be an error rate even higher if taken on a population basis, it’s possible that 30% of Iranians cannot trust their local polling office based on the errors admitted.
But we should not worry – the number of “extra” votes was a mere 3 million, not enough to change the outcome of the election in an electorate with a total of 40 million voters. In other words even if there were no extra votes Ahmadinejad would still have won.
Anyway why are we worrying? No one protested like this when the US 2004 presidential election results were questioned. Yes, seriously that is an argument the Iranians are using in their defense. To quote;
“No one encouraged the American people to stage a riot” because they disagreed with the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004, he said.
Hmmm, it was the 2000 election that was seriously questioned, but then there were some transparent legal steps and an independent court that ultimately decided the outcome of the election. Even so, there was significant outrage at various pre-election and election counting practices.
In both elections foreign journalists commented and various citizens published their own voice of protest, as far as I know Michael Moore was never imprisoned/arrested/beaten/shot.
The top advisors in Iran don’t seem to get it. If there is any evidence of tampering for some of the votes, then no-one can trust any of the votes.
Admitting the election was a little bit wrong is like a woman saying she’s a little bit pregnant. Nonsense.
Change Meme 