Voter fraud in Iran

[Harrison Gardner]

Since I am differently inclined politically, I don't often agree with Candorville's leanings. However, I couldn't in good conscience let the latest strip on the vote in Iran slide. No one (give or take a fool) either believes the polling in Iran or uses that information to make a guess as to who "won" in the election.

The reason I and many others believe the vote fraudulent is quite simple: The country has between 35-40 million voters who use *paper* ballots and the election results were announced some 3-4 hours after the polls closing. It would take a week to hand count that many votes. Unless Allah participated in the post-election counting, the results were quite fixed.

[Anonymous]

I don't think the point of the cartoon was to say whether the vote was or was not fixed. I read it as a treatise on the hypocrisy of the Republicans who refused to think OUR votes were fixed here in America. I don't think Iran was the target of this cartoon strip. Personally, I do think it was fixed. It is sometimes easier to see it when it's done in another country rather than our own. Ours was smoother and not filled with violence. Their fraud was more virulent.

[Ken]

Plenty of people have cited polling as evidence of fraud in the Iranian election. The timing of the count raises suspicion. Poll suggests the direction of the bias. In fact, the government is now claiming that the recount found more votes for Ahmadinejad. I'm sure their argument is that the rapid counting worked against them.
The point is that people have selectively used polling as evidence. Everyone likes polls when the results support their assumptions. Some of Darrin's best strips have illustrated how people on both sides shift their arguments. It's a healthy reminder that we need to think about what we believe.

[Harrison Gardner]

Polling is almost never more accurate than +/- 5 percent, sometimes 3 percent.

Your other comments may be correct, but I don't think Republicans have a lock on fixing elections. The problem is that we have become increasingly a 50/50 voting culture, and the closeness of the races are unbelievably tight. There is probably no system that is fail safe or able to handle situations where the percentage differences are less than one-hundredth (or less!) percent. The Washington State election in 2004 and last year's Minnesota Senate race are examples. Both ultra close; both loaded with fraud.

[Darrin Bell]

Before the Nineties, when pretty much the entire United States still used paper ballots, we often had results within three or four hours after the polls closed. Hand-counting doesn't take much longer than that because votes are counted locally in thousands of precincts across the country. It doesn't matter if a country has 10 million people or 100 million, if precincts are small and each precinct hand counts its own votes, it will take just a few hours.

The notion that the Iranian election was stolen was based on pre-election polls showing an opposition victory. We have no other intelligence in Iran. We did not monitor the elections ourselves. Nobody did. We had only the polls and the word of outraged Iranians that the election was stolen, and Republicans, just like everyone else, considered that to be ample evidence of electoral fraud.

[Brendan Rhodes]

Good points. BTW, I'm loving the recent Iran ones.