Merko
Graduate Poster
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2006
- Messages
- 1,899
Well, how large were those towns with >100% votes/population? I don't think it's that strange if there's enough migration going on that some town would have almost twice as many voters living there, as opposed to being registered there.
Over here, and I guess in most countries, you have to vote where you're registered (or use a write-in ballot). But that doesn't appear to be the case in Iran.
Much as I hate to say it, there's a lot of logic in Khomeini's statement that fraud on the level of 11 million people would be 'impossible', or at least very hard to see how it would be done.
Even if ballots were stuffed to reach those 140% in a few places, that's would not be nearly enough to get an Ahmadinejad win if the true result was that he lost.
I think there are two rather different conspiracy theories in play here.
One is that there was a lot of decentralised fraud going on, leading to results such as more votes than registered voters, or observers being turned away from polling stations.
The other theory is that the actual votes were not considered at all, and that the results were determined centrally (then eventually communicated to local henchmen who substituted the fake results for the ones resulting from the actual counting). Arguments for this theory rely on various statistical analysis purporting to prove that results were not natural, or arguments that some particular local results were not 'believable'.
Of course it's possible that somebody would first, say, stuff the ballots. Then, when those results are still not satisfactory, they would invent a new result out of thin air. But while the two forms of cheating are not strictly excluding each other, I think it's worth noting that you can't just keep on gathering indications of 'fraud', as if any such indication would support every fraud theory. To make the case for fraud, you need a consistent theory, and then you need support for that particular theory. Otherwise it's like a loose changer firing away with completely unrelated claims whose only common denominator is that they are scandalizing some bad guy of choice.
Over here, and I guess in most countries, you have to vote where you're registered (or use a write-in ballot). But that doesn't appear to be the case in Iran.
Much as I hate to say it, there's a lot of logic in Khomeini's statement that fraud on the level of 11 million people would be 'impossible', or at least very hard to see how it would be done.
Even if ballots were stuffed to reach those 140% in a few places, that's would not be nearly enough to get an Ahmadinejad win if the true result was that he lost.
I think there are two rather different conspiracy theories in play here.
One is that there was a lot of decentralised fraud going on, leading to results such as more votes than registered voters, or observers being turned away from polling stations.
The other theory is that the actual votes were not considered at all, and that the results were determined centrally (then eventually communicated to local henchmen who substituted the fake results for the ones resulting from the actual counting). Arguments for this theory rely on various statistical analysis purporting to prove that results were not natural, or arguments that some particular local results were not 'believable'.
Of course it's possible that somebody would first, say, stuff the ballots. Then, when those results are still not satisfactory, they would invent a new result out of thin air. But while the two forms of cheating are not strictly excluding each other, I think it's worth noting that you can't just keep on gathering indications of 'fraud', as if any such indication would support every fraud theory. To make the case for fraud, you need a consistent theory, and then you need support for that particular theory. Otherwise it's like a loose changer firing away with completely unrelated claims whose only common denominator is that they are scandalizing some bad guy of choice.
The 
