Ahmadinejad wins re-election

[Cleon]

I fully expect some of the Apoligists for The Mullahs who hang around here to make that argument.

And I wonder what the resident Raelians will say about it.

 

[Merko]

It's posible they paniced or this is a show of force. A don't even bother trying next time statement.

Panic would be possible, but then I'd certainly expect to see some hard evidence to have emerged by now. This would have been hard enough to pull off with months of planning.

Show of force is pretty useless if you do it invisibly. If they wanted that, they'd chain Mousavi to a pole and cut his head off in public. Literally.

Remember that Mousavi had the right to put observers in every polling place.

He wasn't allowed to.

Do you have a source for that statement? It's true that Mousavi complained that some of his observers had been turned away. That complaint implies that most of his observers were not turned away. Again, if the results from those polling stations where observers had allegedly been turned away were massively different from results in other stations, I think that would have been a very strong indication of fraud.

 

[Merko]

Btw, to those of you who find the results unbelievable on their own merits, what do you think would have been a believable result? Would you have accepted the possibility of a legitimate Ahmadinejad win if he got 51% of the vote? What about 45% and then he won in the runoff? Or do you for some reason (please state) conclude that Ahmadinejad certainly doesn't have real support by more than say 35% of the voters?

 

[OMGturt1es]

I think this fails the basic conspiracy theory test: on the one hand, we are to believe that the Iranian government (or their puppet masters in the Guardian Council) would be able to secretly manipulate the poll results without anyone being caught red-handed. That's not trivial. On the other hand, they would be unable to come up with a 'believable' forged result. When they have access to all previous results, and they are supposedly in full control of what result will be presented.

Except that they don't appear to care. I mean, they openly banned independent pollers, right?

 

[Merko]

I mean, they openly banned independent pollers, right?

I just provided a link implying that Mousavi agreed his own observers (I assume that's what you mean) were usually admitted. Do you have any information to the contrary?

 

[Skeptic]

Btw, to those of you who find the results unbelievable on their own merits, what do you think would have been a believable result?

Gee, I don't know...

...one where the mullah-backed candidate didn't miraculously gain 30% across the country compared to what we know of the polls a few days before?

...one where polls which were not favorable to the mullah-backed candidate were not suppressed?

...one where the opposition leader isn't put under house arrest?

...one where the most popular candidate actually wins in his home town?

Just thinking out loud, here. A few suggestions off the top of my head, as it were.

 

[FireGarden]

I would like to know that 63 percent didn't vote for that guy. I'd just like to have evidence of the fact. I'm asking sincerly, do you have any?

Obviously no-body knows for a fact that it was fraud. But there are some surprising features of the results.

Nothing particularly strange about that. His base is in Teheran, not Khameneh. There was some speculation by western journalists that he would win support also from his home region, but I never saw any basis for that except wishful thinking.

Al-Jazeera gives this argument:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/2009613121740611636.html

Tabriz is the heart of East Azerbaijan, and Azeris are among the tightest ethnic groups in the country, unfailingly voting along ethnic lines.

In the 2005 presidential election, Mohsen Mehralizadeh was a largely unknown and wholly unsuccessful candidate. He came in seventh and last, and yet he still won the Azeri vote in the Azerbaijani provinces. Mir Hossein Mousavi is an Azeri from Tabriz.

I posted that in another thread, but now I reckon that it amounts to saying that Azeris are unfailingly racist -- which I regard as a poor argument. Ahmadinejad apparently improved education in the region, as well as starting some university courses in the Azeri language. That may have won him some favour and is the sort of issue I would expect most people to vote on -- rather than, say, ethnicity of the candidate.

Somewhat harder to explain is the other point I quoted: Mehdi Karoubi won less that 1% of the vote -- less than the other candidate who was regarded as a no-hoper. In the 2005 election, Karoubi won 17% of the vote. What happened to his popularity? There were more blank or invalid votes than votes cast for Karoubi. Did he really tank that badly?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_presidential_election,_2009#Results

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_presidential_election,_2005#Results

 

[Merko]

Just thinking out loud, here. A few suggestions off the top of my head, as it were.

None of which answered my simple question. I only need a number.

But actually, since you're apparently unwilling to have a serious discussion, can't you just leave this thread to people on both sides of the debate who are having an interesting exchange here?

 

[FireGarden]

It's amusing how some people who are positive that "Bush stole the 2000 and 2004 elections" just cannot see any evidence of cheating in these Iranian "elections"...

Can you provide a link to the forum you're reading? It seems so much more entertaining than the JREF.

 

[Skeptic]

I fully expect some of the Apoligists for The Mullahs who hang around here to make that argument.

They're not intentional apologists for the mullahs. It just turns out that way.

They're just embarrased that -- once again -- their "sophisticated" worldview (that Iran is some sort of "democratizing" and "reforming" country) turned out to be wrong, while the "primitive" and "black and white" worldview of the knuckle-dragging masses (that Iran is a theocratic dictatorship and the "elections" are a sham) turned out to be correct.

Naturally, they cannot admit this mistake -- how can they be wrong about anything? You've gotta be kidding! -- so they try to find something, anything, that will allow them to continue to believe that this obvious power grab is "really" the result of "free" elections, so they were "right" after all. If that cannot be done, at least it is always possible to point out some elections shenanigans in the USA, and claim that election fraud incidents in the USA are morally equivalent to the supreme, unelected religious authorities first deciding who is allowed to run at all, and then who is allowed to win, like in Iran.

Both strategies are absurd on their face -- to state them is to refute them -- but they have the advantage saving their self-respect, by "proving" (to themselves, if to nobody else) that their "sophisticated" worldview ("Iran as much a democracy as the USA, only brainwashed conservatives think it isn't!") was correct after all. Unforutunately, a side effect is that they spend their time andenergy either praising as a "democracy" what is really, and obviously, a dictatorical theocracy, or at least claiming there is no difference between the real free democracy (or Republic, to be precise) of the USA and the mullah's madhouse.

This is why they are useful idiots -- useful to the mullahs and the dictators, that is.

 

[Merko]

Ahmadinejad apparently improved education in the region, as well as starting some university courses in the Azeri language. That may have won him some favour and is the sort of issue I would expect most people to vote on -- rather than, say, ethnicity of the candidate.

Yes, maybe. My main argument here though would be this:
Any national election is a large sampling. In any large sampling, you should expect to find 'irregularities' if subjected to post-hoc analysis.

Now, if the results were wholesale fraud, and it is unebelievable for any well-informed Iranian that Mousavi would not get a greater part of the vote based on ethnicity, then why didn't they forge a more 'believable' result?

Basically, there are two ways to steal an election. You can do it openly, or you can try to conceal it. If you try to conceal it, why not try to conceal it well? So basically, I don't think any voting result irregularities support the fraud theory, unless there is an accompanying explanation for why the fraud would lead to this particular irregularity.

Somewhat harder to explain is the other point I quoted: Mehdi Karoubi won less that 1% of the vote -- less than the other candidate who was regarded as a no-hoper. In the 2005 election, Karoubi won 17% of the vote. What happened to his popularity?

Maybe his supporters shifted to Mousavi. With the run-off system it's not obvious why they would do this, except perhaps to avoid a second round.

But again, the fraud theory doesn't really explain this post-hoc anomaly. Why would they fake Karoubis result to 1%, if that's not believable? They could just as well give him 10%. Take away some Mousavi votes, or even some Ahmadinejad votes. I can't think of any mechanism or fraud method which would lead to this result.

In fact, the most probable method for fraud I can think of is ballot stuffing. But obviously you can't stuff votes negatively.

 

[Skeptic]

None of which answered my simple question.

Oh, yes it did. You just didn't like the answer.

 

[FireGarden]

But again, the fraud theory doesn't really explain this post-hoc anomaly. Why would they fake Karoubis result to 1%, if that's not believable? They could just as well give him 10%. Take away some Mousavi votes, or even some Ahmadinejad votes. I can't think of any mechanism or fraud method which would lead to this result.

Are the votes hand-counted or machine-counted? If the latter, then it might be a matter of the machines counting 90% of Karoubi votes as Ahmadinejad votes.*

Google didn't find anything specific to Iran.

*Yeah, sure, they could have set the machines to 80% but maybe they didn't know that before hand.

And just to reiterate... Pure speculation, I don't claim to know anything for sure.

 

[Allen773]

What a disappointment. Not that I'm surprised that the faux democracy didn't work.

 

[Undesired Walrus]

Skeptic, I asked you in the most affable manner for evidence that old mahmoud rigged the elections. I really don't like the guy, so I would like to know that the election was rigged (so then I would know that he didn't reflect the will of the people). Unfortunately, you have replied with strawman and michael-moore style arguments.

 

[Merko]

Are the votes hand-counted or machine-counted? If the latter, then it might be a matter of the machines counting 90% of Karoubi votes as Ahmadinejad votes.

Yes, but why? Switching 50% of all votes to an Ahmadinejad vote would surely have produced a much more credible result, and unlike going for Karoubi's votes, that would have guaranteed an Ahmadinejad win.


Btw, Nate Silver did a feature echoing my sentiment that post-hoc analysis can always reveal 'strange' results.

 

[FireGarden]

Yes, but why? Switching 50% of all votes to an Ahmadinejad vote would surely have produced a much more credible result, and unlike going for Karoubi's votes, that would have guaranteed an Ahmadinejad win.

That's a good point.
There's a still a part of me that wants to understand why Karoubi did so badly. The answer doesn't have to be fraud. But surely there is an answer.

Btw, Nate Silver did a feature echoing my sentiment that post-hoc analysis can always reveal 'strange' results.

Good article.
btw, the Juan Cole article he links to is my source for the Karoubi argument.

 

[OMGturt1es]

I just provided a link implying that Mousavi agreed his own observers (I assume that's what you mean) were usually admitted. Do you have any information to the contrary?

Sorry. I hadn't even yet noticed the second page of this thread when I posted my response.

I'm not sure what the article implies, to be honest. It appears that Mousavi's comments were preliminary warnings based on already reported experiences during the election day. The article reads, " 'Presently they have prevented some of our representatives from being present at polling stations and they do not let us monitor (the vote),' Mousavi said. 'We expect that officials would solve this problem as soon as possible.' " (Empathesis mine) Were these experiences reported early in the election day? Were more reported throughout the day? I honestly don't know.

As quoted by others earlier in this thread, other articles that were published after the election completed seem to imply that the banning of independent observers was not simply isolated to a few anomolous incidents, but admittedly, the writings aren't precise. Again, I don't know.

Personally, I'm not convinced that fraud did or did not take place. I don't know. I do think, however, that Ahmadinejad's general response thus far indicates that he doesn't really care what anyone thinks. For the sake of breviety, I only listed one example, and it may well be a rather poor example, and you are right to question it. I'm not convinced it's a great example myself.

But I think my point is still valid, though it was expressed poorly. Ahmadinejad has gained a reputation for making wild claims that are highly unbelievable. Indeed, he just claimed that Iran is the most stable nation on Earth. It seems difficult to believe that Ahmadinejad actually thinks that anyone actually believes him. To me, it seems more likely that Ahmadinejad makes these claims simply to demonstrate that he can. In my mind, it seems unlikely that Ahmadinejad really cares whether anyone believes that he won the election fairly. In my mind, Ahmadinejad only cares that people understand that he is still "in charge".

And that's my point. While I'm not convinced that fraud did or did not occur, I'm not convinced that Ahmadinejad would really care to construct any elaborate hoax to fraud. On the contrary, I think Ahmadinejad would be more concerned in extablishing the fact that, no matter who says what, he's still "in charge".

 

[Merko]

btw, the Juan Cole article he links to is my source for the Karoubi argument.

I read that now, and I think that on the face of it, he outlines a somewhat plausible scenario. The main catch, I think, is that if they decided to alter the result centrally, they'd have to somehow silence all those reporting the results, as they would of course notice that the official results don't match what they actually reported. Now, Iran has a feared secret police, but would they really be able to do that, without preparation? I'd expect at least someone to be able to get the message out.

Also, I'm not convinced that Cole has his facts straight. He claims that Rezai "seems not to have been at all popular". But looking at a compilation of polls, again by Nate Silver, he seems to have been consistently polling ahead of or equally with Karoubi.

Btw, I'm pretty sure that the Iranians have paper ballots. No source right now, but I've definitely read several reports mentioning sealed containers for paper ballots, and I never heard anything about electronics.

 

[Merko]

As quoted by others earlier in this thread, other articles that were published after the election completed seem to imply that the banning of independent observers was not simply isolated to a few anomolous incidents, but admittedly, the writings aren't precise. Again, I don't know.

I don't claim clear knowledge either. And if there were credible reports that Mousavi's observers were disallowed from most polling places, I'd be the first one to suspect fraud. So far, I haven't seen that though.