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Links June 21 09
Please add your links, views and news in the comments.
Faulty election data, from Tehran bureau (“join us on Twitter” !)
link
The results plotted – Mousavi votes on the y axis, Ahma. on the x axis, with the data points representing subsequent points in time during the vote counting, giving a straight line – is what one obtains in any election, provided the number of voters is large (I arbitrarily state that the no. of Iranian voters is large.)
It is, with large numbers, easy to understand that the proportion, say of 60/40 (61/39, etc.) holds for the first e.g. 20% of voters, and for these 20 plus the next ten, that is almost a third of the voters, etc. until the end result of 60/40 comes in. That is why large elections are often called before they are finished!
There are only two cases under which one can observe (or expect to observe) a rising line with one or more V’s – jagged ups and downs.
a) The probability of that is high when the number of voters is small. If there are 20 voters, and the first 5 happen to vote for A, you have 100% for A. Then the next five, a family, all vote for B: your line is not straight, you have just jumped from 100% for A to 50%.
b) If different voting times are associated with different voters. E.g. retirees vote in the afternoon, employees after 18.00. Then you might expect a high % for the conservative candidate at 18.00 hours, which would then go on to steadily sink down to show 40 at midnight. E.g. Town votes in the morning, but the country does so in the afternoon. Etc.
Not applicable to Iran, so one should expect a straight line, thus a near perfect correlation.
Mebane’s analysis.
A lot of triple statistical speak! Very interesting, hard to follow and impossible to explain here. His report can be cherry picked to conclude there was, or was not, fraud. For. ex. in global research, no fraud: link, and elsewhere yes, fraud!
He himself speaks of “moderately strong support for Iran vote fraud”, see this blogger who summarizes, giving extracts of Mebane’s paper:link
As Mebane himself says, one needs knowledge of Iran to make informed judgment. Mebane PDF
A poster suggested comparing the census and the no. of votes, giving links to the data.
The reports making such claims on the web don’t give numbers/sources, so they are just reports (some seemed to be based on one comment made to a radio station.)
If, as suggested by the poster, there are more votes than adult people (in some districts), that would appear to imply massive old fashioned ballot stuffing, or that ppl voted more than once. Note that in Iran it is theoretically possible, if highly unlikely, to have more votes (in a ward, district, etc.) than there are presumed eligible voters because there are NO electoral lists (that is why the number of potential voters vary so wildly .1) and Iranians can vote anywhere they please.
It must be easy, though, I reckon, to vote more than once. .2 I find this fact the most compelling argument for fraud: systems that contain large loopholes will be subject to fraud in important elections. Note however that in the MSM the fraud is laid at the door of the regime (I have seen no hypothesis concerning how it was done) and not blamed on the *voters.*
What happens when multiple votes are used? Many young voters who might not care at all about the rules and conventions? Keen to rush around voting here and there?
(To Iranians, my post from Switzerland is to be read as representing only my distant take, resting on the slim knowledge I have of Iran, based on reading/a few expat acquaintances only. So please correct.)
The answer is, nothing, unless the supporters of one candidate .3 are more active, savvy, mobile, fraudulent than the supporters of the other candidate. The default assumption is that the cheating evens out. (I.e. you randomly give 10% of voters the oppo to vote twice for their candidate; the end result is identical to the one-vote-only result.) In the case of Iran, any hypothesis would, I think, have to favor Mousavi supporters, as more educated and mobile (not more motivated.)
Posted by: Tangerine | Jun 21 2009 13:55 utc | 13
So, let me get this straight. Amir’s post, according to Parviz, is required reading for all, and in that post Amir states, clearly, that Regime is not an appropriate word, yet a few posts later, after urging us to read Amir’s answers to my questions, Parviz uses, incessantly, the word Regime.
This is the sort of ambiguity I won’t tolerate and is the reason I come to MOA…..to cut through such ambiguity. Regime and Regime Change are code words for the NeoLiberal Agenda. If you want to be taken seriously, don’t use them if you cannot and will not identify what they mean.
Also, you will not receive one shred of sentimental support from me if you believe that an Islamic Republic is a good thing. We’re all smart enough here to realize that the clerics used the Left to push The Shah out of power and then further used the Left, and the Left is not without blame for being duped, to cement their position and implement an Islamic Republic that has oppressed the people of Iran every bit as much as the Shah ever did…..and forced women back into the home behind veils. Keep in mind, everyone, that I provided a link about Montazeri, who is the focal point of all Reform, and he stated in no unceratin terms that a woman’s place is in the home and subserviant to the man, and that Sha’ria Law dictates a woman’s status in society. Is that the kind of Reform you want to support? I don’t…..and that’s Moussavi’s Reform, in my opinion. That’s different from Ahmadinejad how?
So, once again, I will repeat the question about Reform and Reformists, and maybe we will get a cogent answer from our Iranian experts who have this all figured out.
1.) What, exactly, is meant by reform when people refer to Reformist?
2.) Who are the Reformists?
3.) Are the protesters the Reformists, as defined above, if defined?
Just so you know, Parviz, we had dinner with an Iranian friend last night. He fled Iran in the early 80’s because his father was good friends with The Shah. His father was a FSN with the State Department during the Shah’s rule. His mother, now in the States, still receives a pension from the State Department. We discussed this whole matter and we appeared to be in agreement. He agrees that Iran’s best chance for Democracy was in the early fifties when The Shah was exiled and Mossadegh was democratically elected before the CIA got to him. I wouldn’t doubt that the clerics, even then, conspired to remove Mossadegh because a secular government is the last thing they would ever support. He also agreed that The Mullahs are a bunch of authoritarian opportunists regardless of any rhetoric to the contrary, and that a democratic Iran, not an Islamic Republic, is to the benefit of all Iranians. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to discuss the economic side, because on that point I belive he and I would have diverged quite significantly. He’s a devout Capitalist and believes in the divinity of the market. We both agree that the Iranian people have not benefitted from the rich resource that lies beneath its feet……that the general population has nothing to show for the gold that has been siphoned from its shifting sands. That won’t change so long as an Islamic Republic in place, and it won’t change if a NeoLiberal puppet government is put in place if Iran were to destabilize and the regime falls, and the Imperialists move in for the kill.
Posted by: Obamageddon | Jun 21 2009 14:20 utc | 15
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