Speed of Iran vote count called suspicious

[ProSense]

Speed of Iran vote count called suspicious

By JASON KEYSER, Associated Press Writer

CAIRO – How do you count almost 40 million handwritten paper ballots in a matter of hours and declare a winner? That's a key question in Iran's disputed presidential election.

International polling experts and Iran analysts said the speed of the vote count, coupled with a lack of detailed election data normally released by officials, was fueling suspicion around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's landslide victory.

Iran's supreme leader endorsed the hard-line president's re-election the morning after Friday's vote, calling it a "divine assessment" and appearing to close the door on challenges from Iran's reformist camp. But on Monday, after two days of rioting in the streets, he ordered an investigation into the allegations of fraud.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, Ahmadinejad's reformist challenger, claims he was robbed of the presidency and has called for the results to be canceled.

more

Interesting!

[Metric System]

1. Fishy.

[MadMaddie]

2. They didn't think anyone was paying attention!

[DrToast]

5. They just though they'd be able to shut down the dissent

Oops.

[John Q. Citizen]

3. Ahmadinejad's only hope is to get our Supreme Court to select him...

[Aloha Spirit]

8. oops... reply 7 was for you

[grantcart]

4. They divided into piles really quickly and then weighed the ballots lol

[Mass]

6. Speed is not the issue. Many countries can count their vote quickly.

(France is an example, where the result is announced typically a couple hours after the ballot close). There is something weird in the results, but the fact that the US is unable to count its votes quickly is not a sign that other countries cannot.

There are other reasons to think the result is fishy, but I am not sure why the speed of ballot counting is one of them.

[ProSense]

9. France uses handwritten ballots?

How many people are voting in France?

[Mass]

11. Printed ballots, read manually.

and about the same amount of people vote 36.5 millions in the last presidential elections. In fact, with simulation programs, the result was announced at 8 pm, right after Paris closed its ballots, and the first nearly complete results are announced around 10 pm, 2 hours later. It is a question of organization, with ballots counted at the polling place in public.
Not saying the results in Iran look normal, just not understanding the time argument.

[ProSense]

13. I think they're making a distinction between a printed ballot and a handwritten one.

What you are describing is a normal process. A printed ballot where a name is checked is different from a ballot where the name is written in by hand.

[Aloha Spirit]

7. Scalia to Iranians--Get over it!

Seriously though, I've read that a fatwah may have been issued to "secure" the vote

"In an open letter published on June 7, a group of Interior Ministry employees expressed concern about the ministry's plans to intervene and manipulate the election by various means. They mentioned a fatwa issued by an ayatollah in Qom, which provides ministry officials with a religious justification for manipulating the election in favor of Ahmadinezhad. Some reformist sources such as roozonline.com believe that the fatwa was issued by Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, who is known to be a fervent supporter of Ahmadinezhad and his religious worldview."

From a BBC Persian TV journalist last week.
http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2009/06/irans_voting_manipulation_indu.html

I also read accounts on twitter this past weekend of ballot boxes being in various states of tampered with, from broken seals to being set on fire.

[MADem]

10. Gee, ya think? I sure do! nt

[ProSense]

12. delete.

[Clio the Leo]

14. I thought that at the time...

.... the results came in BEFORE they had previously reported to have been expected.

hope that makes sense.

[jeanpalmer]

15. It's possible for each polling place

to keep a running tally of the vote, so that by the time the polls closed each polling place would have an immediate count of the vote. Also, periodic tallies could be sent from each polling place to headquarters, so that by the time polls closed headquarters itself would pretty much know who had won, especially if the margin was huge.

Where I vote, you put your ballot in a box and they don't open the box and count them until the polls are closed. But you can envision a system where up-to-date counts are kept that would be available almost immediately after the polls closed.

[invictus]

16. But the neo-cons said the vote was legit?

nt