Reply #17: The election was rigged

[Phx_Dem]

Khalil Shikaki, a leading Palestinian polling expert and director of the
Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, argued that:

despite all the hand-wringing over whether Palestinians have suddenly taken a more extremist turn, a closer look at the numbers reveals a more complex
picture. For one thing, Hamas received only 45 percent of the popular vote. The nature of the electoral system, which magnified the existing fragmentation of Hamas's opposition, is what gave the Islamist movement the 58 percent of the seats it won. The divided Fatah and four other secular parties won a majority of the popular vote – 55 percent – but only 39 percent of the seats. (A handful of independent candidates won the rest.)

http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp2006/rp06-017.pdf