From Iran expert Farideh Farhi in HawaiiAsterix said:
What happened in Iran was not only a stolen election (which is different from a selection), it was a brazenly stolen election against a people who in unprecedented numbers had chosen to acknowledge the legitimacy of Iran’s electoral process.
The lovely folks at the Interior Ministry did not even try to make it look like it was not stolen. Aside from the clear irregularities in comparison to Iran’s own past elections in the way the results were reported (e.g., lump sum reporting instead of district reporting as mentioned by Ibrahim Yazdi, not announcing the number of voided ballots and so on), there is absolutely no way the numbers add up.
Ahmadinejad is reported to have received 24 million (even more than Khatami they keep repeating) out of total voter turnout of 39 million voter. This presumes an increase of about 8 million votes for him from the second round of the last election and the unbelievable implication that the majority of the additional 11 million voters that usually do not vote and voted in this election cast their ballot for Ahmadinejad! The argument is simply not credible to anyone who knows Iran.
Why did they do it so brazenly? Why not try to fiddle with the results in ways they have done with the past , by voiding ballots, stuffing them here and there and so on and lo and behold draw Ahmadinejad’s name with let us say 52 percent of the vote. Because they couldn’t. The incredible turnout made it impossible for such subtle manipulation of results. This brazenness was deemed necessary as a show of force; to make sure that the chunk of the electorate that is usually silent in Iran but was turned vocal/political in this election again becomes silent, apolitical, and cynical.
I must however say that as an Iranian there was one result that would have been even more devastating for me than what just happened and that would have been the possibility of the majority of Iranians voting for a man whose mendacity and wrong-headed policies were clearly exposed during the campaign.
Not only Mr. Ahmadinejad will head an illegitimate government but, by accepting the contested results even before the Guardian Council had certified them, the office of Iran’s leader has further delegitimized itself in front of a large chunk of the Iranian political and economic elite and the majority of the Iranian people. It is a shameful day for them and a very sad day for Iran merely because it didn’t have to be.
