Speed of Iran vote count called suspicious

[steven johnson]

It's a miracle! A record for the most rapid vote count in Iranian history.

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.

One of the central questions was how 39.2 million paper ballots could be counted by hand and final results announced by authorities in Tehran in just over 12 hours. Past elections took at least twice as long.

The Interior Ministry released results from a first batch of 5 million votes just an hour and a half after polling stations closed. Over the next four hours, it released vote totals almost hourly in huge chunks of about 5 million votes _ plowing through more than half of all ballots cast.






Speed of Iran vote count called suspicious

[rpannier]

1. God and Mohammed were counting the ballots

While Jesus, Moses and Abraham were running the tally boards

[goclark]

2. They need to do a replay and let's see how that comes out

Bet that will never happen and it would be so easy.

[stray cat]

3. Supposedly they have a hand count and did it in a few hours - I don't think so.

[applegrove]

4. Well if past elections took much longer then that is suspicious. Unless

they have a new system in place. I've said before in Canada we count the ballots in about 1 hour or less.But we have a simple system.