— June 14, 2009 (Original web site not currently available)
There were reports of widespread voter intimidation at the polls by the police and ballot destruction. There were also reports that the bureaucracy that runs elections had been purged of those not loyal to the Ahmadinejad regime. Iran's elections are run by the same group that selects candidates, the Guardian Council. This may explain the suspicious nature of election reporting by government authorities.
An experienced reporter on Iranian politics, Laura Secor, was clear in her assessment:
"There can be no question that the June 12, 2009 Iranian presidential election was stolen. Dissident employees of the Interior Ministry, which is under the control of President Ahmadinejad and is responsible for the mechanics of the polling and counting of votes, have reportedly issued an open letter saying as much."
Her doubts are widely held in Iran, according to a just published story by Reuters:
INSTANT VIEW: Iran's election result staggers analysts
Maziar Bahari of Newsweek erroneously reported that, "Less than a month before balloting starts, all the polls give a healthy edge to the hardline incumbent." That statement is simply wrong. Pre election polls varied greatly. The last national poll of 7,900 citizens showed a 57% to 24% Mousavi lead. Checking the validity of any Iranian pre election poll is difficult due to limited to no access to data and methodology. The momentum of the campaign measured by crowd size showed a wave of enthusiasm for Mousavi and his "Green" reform movement.
There were troubling patterns in the announced vote totals that indicated a rigged contest. A statistical analysis from The Tehran Bureau (or pdf of site if it's down) showed nearly the same difference in votes from the first through sixth phase of reporting by government authorities. The poster, Muhammad Sahimi, concluded:
"Statistically and mathematically, it is impossible to maintain such perfect linear relations between the votes of any two candidates in any election — and at all stages of vote counting. This is particularly true about Iran, a large country with a variety of ethnic groups who usually vote for a candidate who is ethnically one of their own."
—The Teheran Bureau, Muhammad Sahimi, June 13, 2009 (or pdf of site)
This type of precision ignored factors like variable vote totals by region, ethnic group, and locality, e.g., city, town, and so forth. Juan Cole outlined several of the glaring inconsistencies in the election results that support this analysis.
Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com took a look at this data, called it "dubious," and concluded that it did not prove election fraud. He compared the actual reports of Iran election results to special model he built for the 2008 United States presidential election. His model presumed that states reported a) results in six phases (which they do not), as the Iranian results were reported, and b) by alphabetical groupings, e.g. Alabama through Illinois, etc. (which is not the case in real world U.S. election reporting). Jumping through these self created hoops, Silver was able to fit the 2006 U.S. presidential election into the statistical pattern of the Iranian election.
In addition to a flawed comparison to U.S. election reporting, Silver ignored the electoral success of reform movement candidate Mohammad Khatami in 1997 (70% share/80% turnout) and 2001 (78% share/70% turnout). Reform movement ally Rafsanjani won the two presidential elections before that in 1989 and 1993. Ahmadinejad's 2005 victory was a fluke due to a boycott by reformers after their candidates were by the guardian's council. Turnout was only 48%. Clearly, reformers are the dominant vote getters in open Iranian elections
With a history of reform candidate dominance in high turnout elections, we're supposed to believe that a 75% to 80% turnout in 2009 produced a lopsided victory for the radical Islamic candidate with failed economic policies.
Then there are the striking similarities between the Iranian election and the 2006 Mexican presidential election. There was massive evidence of fraud from the destruction of ballots to phased election reports that were so perfect statistically that it appeared to be the product of computer generated program.
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