How Fast Was It?
When I said on Saturday that ballots were counted too quickly, that was based on the delayed reporting in the West. I had no true idea on how quickly the election was called, I assumed it was less than 12 hours from the polls closing.
Farnaz Fassihi of the Wall Street Journal in Tehran says in his article, Crowds, Calm and Then Gunshots:
When the state announced, less than two hours after polls had closed on Friday, that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won by a landslide, supporters of his rivals were shocked. When they found out about allegations of widespread cheating and rigging of votes, they were outraged.
The two hours was confirmed by Karim Sadjadpour in CNN’s Q & A: Was the Iranian election rigged?.
Almost 40 million hand-written, folded, paper ballots in boxes in a country the size of Alaska, and in two hours they know results of a four-way election – that is what you have to believe to accept this election as free and fair.
4 comments
Wow. That is just amazing. Somebody had to have panicked — the early returns of hand counting must have found a landslide against Ahmadinejad and a hasty Plan B put into effect — because clearly this was a clumsy last-minute effort. The Iranians may not have the democratic heritage of Precinct 13 and Karl Rove, but they ain’t *stupid*, not unless they’re panicked anyhow…
– Badtux the Elections Penguin
.-= ´s last blog ..Thought for the day =-.
Like you say, panic is the only way to explain their garbage results.
I would have set up a spreadsheet from the last election and waited for a report on the number of voters in a district and played with it until I got a reasonable win overall, while losing in the obvious places. I might even have reported Mousavi leading in early returns from Tehran, and then slowly shift towards Ahmadinejad later when the rural returns would come in.
All I can figure is that they couldn’t find any significant number of Ahmadinejad votes in the first ten boxes and started making frantic phone calls.
Those who believe the results of the Iranian election probably think Bush actually won our elections, too.
.-= ´s last blog ..Gotta go hug Wasaabi now…. =-.
It was the attitude of the Shrubbery that helped Ahmadinejad win in 2005, so people should have expected him to emulate his “creator”.