How Ahmadinejad Stole an Election -- And How He Can Fix It

In June, 40 million Iranians voted in their presidential election. The degree of tampering and fraud has made it impossible to determine the winner -- and has heightened the need for reasonable changes to create free and fair elections.

BY MEHDI KHALAJI , ROBERT PASTOR | AUGUST 19, 2009

Rarely does a country have such a clear choice as Iran did on June 12. On that day, nearly 40 million people voted for a president.  The incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, pledged to continue his economic policies and his anti-Western, Holocaust-denying, nuclear-confrontational approach. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, promised economic reform, increasing openness with the West, human rights, and nuclear negotiations.

While some polling stations were still open, the Interior Ministry declared Ahmadinejad the winner by a landslide. The opposition rejected it, and despite arrests and beatings, the protests have continued. Ahmadinejad's and Mousavi's supporters both proclaim their candidate won.

But to all others, it is clear there were substantial irregularities. Although Ahmadinejad's crackdown appears designed to end questions about his legitimacy, even conservative clerics are demanding answers from the state. Here is what we know happened -- and a plan to prevent fraud in the next election.

Using even a minimal standard, there are good reasons for Iranians not to trust election results. The president-controlled Interior Ministry conducts elections in Iran. It denies opposition observers access to polling stations and counts the votes. Only half of Mousavi's observers were permitted to observe polling stations in the capital city of Tehran; they had even less access in the rest of the country. None of the observers were permitted to see whether the ballot boxes were empty when the vote began. Nor were they permitted to accompany the mobile ballot boxes, which collected nearly one-third of the votes. And no Mousavi or impartial observers accompanied the ballot boxes from local wards to the provincial committees and finally to Tehran for the count.

Before the election, the reformists' Committee for Safeguarding the Votes expressed concern that 54 million ballots were printed -- millions more than for past elections and 8 million more than the number of eligible voters. Moreover, some ballots did not have serial numbers. About 40 million people voted, but no one accounted for the other 14 million ballots.

The Committee for Safeguarding the Votes also said it found a large number of Mousavi votes after the election, including some in the northern forests of Iran. It surmised that these votes were removed from the boxes and replaced with votes for Ahmadinejad. Mousavi himself claims he has evidence that the total number of votes exceeded the number of eligible voters by as much as 40 percent in more than 170 constituencies. Some of the party observers claim ballots for Ahmadinejad featured the same handwriting in the same ink.

These accusations of fraud are credible. Even the conservative Guardian Council has acknowledged that as many as 3 million votes might have been fraudulent. But, given the way the system operates, no one knows with certainty how many votes were legitimate and how much fraud occurred.

In many other countries with rigged electoral systems, opposition members boycott. That did not happen in Iran -- and now, millions are risking their lives to compel the authorities to count their votes accurately. As the protest moves to its next phase, the country could stave off a crisis by agreeing to four fundamental electoral safeguards.

Getty Images

 

Mehdi Khalaji is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the author of Apocalyptic Politics; on the Rationality of Iranian Policy.

Robert Pastor is a professor and co-director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University. He developed the election-monitoring initiatives of the Carter Center in Atlanta and has organized the observation of elections in about forty countries.

DEMONIZEDCHINA

10:42 AM ET

August 20, 2009

one-sided account

Because US need Mousavi to be in the office. So the other one who don't like US must be evil. One-sided account does not help you understand that country. By reading western medias I got the impression that there are no ordinary people in Iran who support "the very bad guy" Ahmadinejad. That's not true.

I am not saying that there is no problem there. I think in order to keep your hegemony (westerner are afraid of losing their power, that's the key, right?), you need a different approach, not just accuse the others are immoral.

 

PRESERVER3

11:40 AM ET

August 20, 2009

The US doesn't "need Mousavi"

DemonizedChina suggests that the guiding principle on Iranian foreign policy is somehow a "need." This logical fallacy is used repeatedly by those who use the word "hegemony" to describe American participation in the political scene.

The United States does not "need" to maintain a control over the internal politics of other nations to maintain a hegemony, just as China, Russia and other nations need not maintain spheres of influence to maintain their power and presitge among other nations. They choose this route when it provides an advantage, but this isn't a need like the basic capital necessary to produce the needs of their population. These are wants and desires driven from a variety of internal and external pressures.

Iran's government "needs" to use an external threat and enemy, currently headed by the not completely uncalled for demonization of the United States, to maintain their high inflation, grossly disproportionate military spending and failed internal socio-economic models. They need to maintain an iron grip on the political infrastructure and revolutionary spirit to distract their population from the failings and corruption that keep one of the richest oil states from adequately giving even 2% of their GDP to nearly 90% of their population. The United States has similar internal problems but has a partially functional electoral system that can distract the public from the failings of one government into the failings of the next. Iran's rejection of fair elections refuses this method of dealing with their internal inequalities. As a side note, China's rejection of multiple parties also renders them lame and impotent when they attempt to address the concerns of their people that they are not being fairly represented. I don't suggest that the American Republic fairly represents its people, but even the illusion is gone in nations that cannot hold fair elections and must execute or imprison political prisoners as well as anyone who publicly states their opposition, to hold their populations enslaved.

This excellent blog merely spells out the methods by which a population could be assured of a clear transition of power. That transition of power translates to legitimacy for the leadership of a nation, and participation by its citizens in the path of that nation's development.

Most Western nations figured this out roughly 200 years ago, while most Asian nations are still struggling with the basics, and for this, they suffer.

Why should Western nations fear losing power to nations that can't get the basics of even Athenian style representative democracies in check? Because they can build war machines that can produce weapons of mass destruction (because these are fundamentally easy to build) and because they inevitably leak these weapons because their political structure is prone to corruption and collapse. It's not a need of power then that drives Western nations to attempt to influence Iran and to a smaller degree even China, but a very reasonable fear of physical security.

A nuke in Washington DC, Los Angeles, or New York could kill millions. A nuke in Beijing would most definitely kill millions. A nation can work hard on physical security and China and Russia have done admirably, but nothing is perfect. To that end, the United States has engaged in decades, to some small success, in establishing a proactive policy that influences nations outside of its borders, not to threaten her borders or assets. With only a few notable exceptions, the United States has been remarkably successful. Can the same be said of nations that stalwartly claim that American involvements in world politics infringe upon the rights of other nations?