We just received this letter from someone who recently got back from a visit to Iran. The letter writer gives an overview of a conversation she had with a representative of the Provincial governor’s office in her home town.
So fresh and so clean, and such neat handwriting
Hello Friends,
I have been back from Iran for a few days now. While there, I has some interesting talks with various people in charge about the recent elections and possible rigging of the elections. Below is some of what I gathered.
While in my small home town, I talked with Mr R., the rep from the governor’s office about the elections.
He mentioned that the process of voting was not rigged as the ballot boxes are staffed by the regular people: shop keepers, teachers, and such.
The irregularities were in two areas: The campaign process up to the election day and the counting of votes.
On the first issue, there were numerous anomalies with respect to the campaign laws and Ahmadinejad’s misuse of them. The instances that I remember Mr R. mentioned:
- About two months before elections, The Ahmadinejad campaign team asked to hold a rally/public talk on the grounds of Khomeini’s tomb. The son of Khomeini refused access on the grounds that the rally would give unequal and preferential access to his campaign team. Refused the use of Khomeini site, the Ahmadi team used the grounds of the Imam Reza mosque in Mashad. This was done even though the Mousavi team was repeatedly refused access to any stadium or large open space in Mashhad and when they did get access, the microphones did not work so people could not hear him.
- Some of the clergy of the Guardian Council openly called Ahmadi the legitimate son of the revolution just before voting day, in clear violation of the impartiality they are supposed to uphold….
- While the campaign rules specified a certain (small) size of campaign fliers and displays on shop windows, offices, etc., the Ahmadi team used two story buildings to display immense pictures and incredibly large sizes of campaign propaganda.
Mr R. also mentioned that the Ahmadi team used the two months of time before the election to officially open lots of plants/factories and newly constructed sites around the country so that the opening ceremonies would also become identified with his election campaign.
Then there was an anomaly in the counting of the votes. He called this episode on election night right after the polls closed a “mystery” that he could not solve (!):
The story is that in the governor’s office in my home town, they would count the votes and then transmit those votes — from small counties and villages around my town — over the internet to the interior ministry as the tallied votes became available. There was a constant stream of votes counted from different areas and then transmitted to the interior ministry in Tehran. In return, the interior ministry transmitted those tallied votes over state TV so they could watch on state TV the same vote counts that they had sent to the interior ministry. This went on without a problem until 1 a.m. that night.
Around 1 a.m., Mr R. said, the connection over the internet was cut off (he did not know why) and there was no more transmission of votes to the Interior Ministry. I asked him if this problem was just for our town or for all of Iran. He said the cut in communications was country wide; no county or town was able to send tallied votes to the interior ministry.
He and his colleagues at the governor’s office were therefore flabbergasted when they saw that past 1 a.m. and well into 3 a.m. that night, the interior ministry kept on transmitting tallied votes over state TV even though none had been transmitted from the town or from other towns. He said that he and his colleagues at the governor’s office watched the TV monitor in utter surprise as they saw voting results on TV for many areas that they had not been able to send over to the interior ministry due to the cut in communications.
As an explanation, Mr R. used an analogy: in his school days, he and his fellow students would “work” solutions to the math problems backwards to get to the question (that would have the particular solution they were looking at). This they did in order to do well in the exams and be able to address the questions well. He said it looked to him as though the authorities in the interior ministry followed a similar scheme! They devised the results they wanted and, using some math software program, attempted to make it look legitimate!
It is interesting to me that he followed up all this explanation by saying that of course none of these anomalies could be proven.
I heard from other people claiming reliable information due to their connections to the Ahmadi campaign team. They said that there were other forms of rigging reported. One form was to write Ahmadi’s name on the white (empty) ballots.
There was more talk of the elections but this short report may be interesting for you….
Best,
H.
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