538's Nate Silver: The Ayatollah's Flawed Logic

[Turborama]

I don't know how many people caught this expression of logic from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in his call for an end to the protests over the electoral outcome in Iran. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8108661.stm">As reported by the BBC:

Responding to allegations of electoral fraud, the ayatollah insisted the Islamic Republic would not cheat.

"There is 11 million votes difference," the ayatollah said. "How one can rig 11 million votes?"

This particular argument is not unique to the Ayatollah. It has also been used by some Western observers such as http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,630552,00.html">Flynt Leverett (emphasis mine):

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Still many people, including in Washington, have expressed skepticism as to the validity of the results.

Leverett: I am a little surprised by the margin, too. But that makes me more comfortable about the overall validity of the election. Look at the irregularities Mousavi is citing now: that they ran out of ballot paper in some polling precincts, that they did not keep some polls open long enough. There is no way such things could change the overall outcome which is clearly in favor of Ahmadinejad. If you compare this to the flaws of the presidential election in Florida in 2000, it seems very insignificant.

Leverett and Ayatollah are arguing from an ironically Western conception of how to rig an election. In the United States, it is actually rather difficult to steal an election: because of our federalist system, elections are monitored and voting totals are reported by hundreds or thousands of individual officials at the state, county, and precinct levels. There is therefore a rather substantial marginal cost to stealing additional votes: you have to recruit some number of additional people into the conspiracy, and hope they don't rat you out or leave some kind of paper trail that makes obvious your intention. It is probably not that difficult to find a few corrupt (but competent) stooges who will help you out, but for each additional vote that you want to steal, you have to go lower down the food pyramid, soliciting the help of people who are less loyal and might undermine your plan.

Leverett and Ayatollah are arguing from an ironically Western conception of how to rig an election. In the United States, it is actually rather difficult to steal an election: because of our federalist system, elections are monitored and voting totals are reported by hundreds or thousands of individual officials at the state, county, and precinct levels. There is therefore a rather substantial marginal cost to stealing additional votes: you have to recruit some number of additional people into the conspiracy, and hope they don't rat you out or leave some kind of paper trail that makes obvious your intention. It is probably not that difficult to find a few corrupt (but competent) stooges who will help you out, but for each additional vote that you want to steal, you have to go lower down the food pyramid, soliciting the help of people who are less loyal and might undermine your plan.

But this is simply not the case in Iran. All votes are counted are reported by the Interior Ministry. There is no other source of information. There are no election monitors. Nor does the fraud alleged involve any sort of physical process (e.g. stuffing ballot boxes). It is simply a matter of changing numbers on a spreadsheet. Under these conditions, it is essentially no more difficult to steal a thousand votes than one, a million than a thousand, or 11 million than one million.

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Full article with graph: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/ayatollahs-flawed-logic.html

[MADem]

1. Jeez, it;s easy. Ask Joey Stalin, he'll tell ya! nt

[Ikonoklast]

2. Flawed logic.

It's not the actual votes that mattered.

It's who counts the votes.

If I have the final say as to what the tally is, I control the election, just like the mullahs do in Iran.