Elections in Iran

[ciphergoth]

Can't tear my eyes away from the situation in Iran. Please link me to any articles that provide evidence on whether the official results are legit or anything else you think is a must-read on this situation.

Comments

[lizw.livejournal.com]

There were smaller-scale riots after the last two Iranian elections. The explanation I've been reading today is that on those occasions the main rival to the official winner did not come out in support of the rioters, as Moussavi appears to have done this time. Twitter may also be helping - you can reach more people more quickly that way, and be found more easily by sympathisers you don't know personally, than you can with SMS or blogs.

As for the leaks, one of the things Moussavi was praised for during his term as prime minister was his reform of corruption and incompetence in the civil service, which has apparently since returned in epic proportions, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are some civil servants who don't like that state of affairs and are hoping he'll do the same thing again if he becomes president.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

It sounds as if you don't think we can be all that confident that there was fraud - surprising given the reporting so far. Of course an election is supposed to do better than that and actually bring about confidence that there was *not* fraud.

[djm4]

The reporting so far doesn't really lead me to be confident about anything concerning the election results. What's emerging for me is a clear pattern of people assuming that the result they're predicting from small sample sizes is the result throughout Iran. And an awful lot of people outside Iran wanting the result to be wrong, so leaping on any evidence of fraud as obviously correct, while dismissing any suggestion that the elections were fair as propaganda by Ahmedinejad.

Oh, and Nate Silver's: 'Firstly, some 27.4 percent of Iranians told TFT they were undecided. By comparison, a month before the U.S. presidential election, about 5-9 percent of respondents generally claimed to be undecided. Perhaps it is folly to try and extrapolate the Western experience to Iran -- but for 27 percent of the voters to claim to be undecided one month before a high-profile, high-turnout election strikes me as unlikely.' looks highly suspect to me. 27% of voters declaring to be undecided wouldn't be unusual in a UK election, depending on how the question was asked. And I'm not sure about his US figures - this site suggests 18% less than two months before the US election - if he's correct, then over half of undecided US voters made up their minds in about two weeks.

[djm4]

And an awful lot of people outside Iran wanting the result to be wrong, so leaping on any evidence of fraud as obviously correct, while dismissing any suggestion that the elections were fair as propaganda by Ahmedinejad.

Just to be clear, I think you're going out of your way to avoid doing that.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I'm holding back on the issue of whether there was fraud because I don't feel I know enough about Iranian politics to have confidence in any of the available informants. The only source I know personally - not a supporter of either of the main candidates - is not currently in Iran, but doubts the accuracy of many of the stories coming from there right now, both on Twitter and on mainstream news.