Related to what I posted the day after the election.
The British think tank Chatham House has released a study pointing out the profound differences between voting patterns in Iran's recent election and the 2005 election when President Ahmadinejad came to power, casting doubt on whether they could have occurred without manipulation. The results would have required Ahmadinejadto have received support in a third of the provinces from all former conservative voters, all former centrist voters, all new voters and almost half of all former reformist voters — an unlikely scenario.
Chatham House points out that turnout in two provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, was more than 100 percent and goes on to mention that using the identity documents of dead people to cast additional ballots is a common and widespread problem in Iran.
The Chatham House report casts doubt on the idea that large numbers of conservative voters who had not voted in previous election might have come out this time to support Ahmadinejad. While the official results indicate Ahmadinejad increased the conservative vote by 113 percent compared with the 2005 election, there is little correlation at the provincial level between the increase in turnout and the swing to the president.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_iran_fraud_allegations
.
