I'm a space girl without a race.

[skywalker]

Reuters:

A poll of Iran's electorate three weeks before its election showed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad leading by a 2-to-1 ratio, greater than the announced results of the contested vote, the pollsters said on Monday.

The poll showed Ahmadinejad's disputed victory, which has sparked riots and demonstrations since it was announced, might reflect the will of the people and "is not the product of widespread fraud," pollsters Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty said in a column in The Washington Post.

... "While Western news reports from Tehran in the days leading up to the voting portrayed an Iranian public enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad's principal opponent ... our scientific sampling from across all 30 of Iran's provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead," the pollsters said.

Thirty-four percent of those polled said they would vote for Ahmadinejad while 14 percent preferred Mousavi and 27 percent were undecided.

"The breadth of Ahmadinejad's support was apparent in our pre-election survey," the pollsters said, rejecting arguments the poll might have reflected a fearful reluctance to give honest answers.

... The poll also found nearly four in five Iranians wanted to change the system to give them the right to elect Iran's supreme leader, not currently subject to popular vote, they said. Iranians chose free elections and a free press as their most important priorities.

"These were hardly 'politically correct' responses to voice publicly in a largely authoritarian society," the pollsters said.

"The fact may simply be that the re-election of President Ahmadinejad is what the Iranian people wanted."

Interview with Pollsters @ WaPo via The Guardian:

Conducted by telephone from a neighbouring country, field work was carried out in Farsi by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award. Our polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

... Yet the baseline distributions we found then mirror the results reported by the Iranian authorities, indicating the possibility that the vote is not the product of widespread fraud.

Comments

[inarticulate]

Somehow, that doesn't really change the fact that people were killed over it.

[skywalker]

... didn't say it does!

[inarticulate]

No, but the focus of those quotes is really candidate-centric, and there has been a lot of making-it-about-the-candidates all around. Which is really… missing the point, to me. (Especially those comparing it to the Florida incident in the US. Uhhh.)

[skywalker]

Hm, I've mostly kept out of that, so I haven't heard any Florida comparisons. Are people saying "Americans can't talk because we had a stolen election, too," or something?

Violence against peaceful protesters is wrong, what the incumbent government is doing is wrong, and the abuses of human rights are terrible. The protesters should be able to protest whatever they want without fear of injury! However, if the majority of the Iranian people really do want Ahmadinejad in power, I back foreigners' efforts to stop the violence but not to end the violence by installing Mousavi.

[inarticulate]

YEP! Thank you, Twitter, for many good reasons not to watch the #iranelection hashtag raw.

[nods] Yeah, that's pretty much where I'm coming from. Though, really, my thing is more that people should be aware that this is happening at all. There are far too many massacres/genocides/violent put-downs that we're not (or weren't) aware of, myself included. (And, in theory, the more people educate themselves, the easier it would be to call America on doing stupid shit like… swooping in to put Mousavi in and swooping back out.)

[skywalker]

BETTER SITUATIONAL AWARENESS IS MY ISSUE. I'm not claiming to be an expert, but really, guys, we kicked out a popular Iranian leader in '53, and what we got was a violently anti-American revolution twenty-six years later. Interfering with national sovereignty is not awesome.

But hey, at least now I've learned that dissidents in, like, Burma totally just need a bigger Facebook/Twitter presence and a widely-flattering color to get American attention. If I shoop Aung San Suu Kyi's hair on all my icons, maybe people will care?!

[parfacy]

I'm glad people are more socially and politically aware now, but I hardly think that's what would be good for the US anyway. Mousavi isn't all that different than Nejad.

[inarticulate]

My point was that people aren't aware (and definitely weren't when it happened in the past) and it's not about the candidates and who's better. It's about the fact that this sort of thing does happen and is happening and going in to play god over a government (again) isn't going to do anyone any favors, US included.

I have no appropriate icons on this journal

[parfacy]

As someone who's not American, but who is immediately affected by the consequences of the US interfering in Iran, I'm really worried. I remain optimistic, but I'm hoping it doesn't come to that.

Re: I have no appropriate icons on this journal

[inarticulate]

As someone who is American, I hope it doesn't, either! And I hope if it DOES come to that, it's not America that responds. The UN, maybe, as suggested downthread (though honestly, I have no idea, so take that with a grain of salt), but I'm very doubtful of our government's ability to pull off anything helpful at this point, regardless of intention. Which doesn't mean that we as ordinary citizens shouldn't be educating ourselves-- because we definitely should.

[loquacious]

27% undecided is a lot... even three weeks before the election. Not to mention the fact that we aren't told what the other 25% of respondents said.

I understand that it is possible the votes really weren't tampered with, or weren't tampered with in the severe way we're expecting. But this doesn't change the fact that things seem fishy about the election results.

[skywalker]

Presumably they were leaning towards the other two major candidates in the race...? It wasn't just two guys.

And even if the election results are right, it doesn't justify shooting peaceful protesters, but if Iran's people did choose another term for 'Nejad, I think the global community needs to accept that part of the election...

[loquacious]

I'm SO distrustful of poll numbers, especially when they're quoted like that and then used as proof.

I completely agree that if the election turns out to be a democratic one with a reasonable amount of fraud (because most elections have to have at least a LITTLE fraud) then the international community needs to let it go.

[perrito]

I'm really really glad the US is staying out of it.

And re: fraud. I'm pretty sure the current Mexican president stole the election, so when a large group of people scream fraud I am inclined to believe it.

[skywalker]

Me too. One time deposing a popularly elected Iranian leader is enough. Besides, I imagine the incumbent regime would love the US to come out against its official results just so it could go "THE WEST IS FUCKIN' WITH US, TIME TO CRACK DOWN HARDER."

Really? I hadn't heard about that. Actually, I thought I read something about Afghanis going to Mexico to learn how to hold fair elections. gj, Afghanistan.

[perrito]

AS A NON-AMERICAN I'm over here going "THANK YOU OBAMA FOR LETTING THESE PEOPLE DEAL WITH THEIR OWN STUFF" Though I think if it spirals out of control the UN should probably do something.


Our system is awesome in theory. 'Cause we have crayons and ballots and ANONYMITY. And the votes are counted by people chosen at random, so bias is unlikely.

However, people sometimes are paid to "miscount" and there's been cases of ballots going missing and harhar last presidential elections were a mess.

[skywalker]

Hmm, yeah, but I think we have to be careful about who the UN picks out to do something, and ... basically all of NATO should stay out. UN action is probably moot, though, because Russia and China will most likely veto anything lolol.

Graaaaargh, that sucks. I think our big problem with rigging now is fucked up machines and people being turned away from the polls.