More on the Iranian Election

In regards to the Iranian election some people are more certain that their was actual fraud. Journalist Michael Collins says,
“The council consists of six Islamic jurists appointed by the Supreme Leader of Iran and six from Majilis, Iran’s popularity elected parliament. They screen presidental canidates through background checks and a detailed written examination. Very few pass the test. Since 2004, the council has routinely rejected reform candidates. That’s the fraud. It couldn’t be more obvious.” ( Collins.2009)

Considering how difficult it is to ever become a candidate on the ballot in Iran. It is hard for me to believe a person like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is a holocaust denier, and very radical in his ways got onto the ballot for a second time. To me you could make an argument saying that Ahmadinejad’s regine is one of funamentalism.

“ Fundamentalism’ from an exclusively religious connotation and to associate it instead with any form of thought or idealology that is uncomprimising in its worldview and which represents itself as the sole source of truth or the only solution to global problems.” (Ali. 2009)

Looking at the reformist perspectives Ahmadinejad’s regime could fit into this from the fact that his way is the right way. Also, when they protested how he sent troops out to disrupt the protests, and put them to an end. You could say that this shows how his way is the only way. The fact that he denies the holocaust, and has even held confereces with other anti- semtic followers tells you a lot a bout his character.

Another example of Ahmadinejad’s regime would be looking at Max Weber’s defintation of a modern state.

“ a state is that human community which (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of legitimate physical violence within a certain territory, this “territory” being another of the defining characteristics of the state.” ( Weber. 1994. Pg 310-311)

Here the used the power of being the state and stopping the protestors through physical brute force. Going into the numbers of the election there is a possibility of fraud occurring. Though, supports of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would disagree with this statement. Saying that fraud is impossible. If there was any fraud of any sort someone in the counting process would’ve said something. An example, of voting fraud from the blog The Great Beyond.

“They used the results published by the Ministry of the Interior and examined the last two digits of the votes reported for the four main candidates.

“The numbers look suspicious,” they report in the Washington Post.
There are far too many 7s, for a start, and not enough 5s. Such results would occur in fewer than four in 100 non-manipulated election results, they write.

That would not rule out Iran’s election being fair. But Scacco and Berber go further. They note that previous work has proven that humans have trouble generating “non-adjacent digits”, ie: 27 as opposed to 23, or 36 rather than 34. Non-manipulated results should be approximately 70% non-adjacent digits; Iran’s results are 62% non-adjacent.
The probability of that happening in a fair election is less than 4.2%, they write.” (Beber & Scacco. 2009)
According to these statistics there was a 96.8% of voting fraud that occurred in the 2009 election in Iran. The thing that is really disturbing to me is if these calculations are correct, how no one has stepped forward about the fraud. Also, if this was the case wouldn’t the U.N. step in, and appoint the candidate who actually won the election? Then, when you look at the cities in Iran and where the voting takes place the number of votes do not add up. Looking at an article from the New York Times journalist Michael Slackman says this,
“Iran’s most powerful oversight council announced on Monday that the number of votes recorded in 50 cities exceeded the number of eligible voters there by three million, further tarnishing a presidential election that has set off the most sustained challenge to Iran’s leadership in 30 years.”( Slackman. 2009)
Looking at the most recent facts of the election it seems to me that the Iran election did have some fixing to it. The big question to me is why is no one doing anything about it?